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BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF 
INVENTIONS 



BOYS' SECOND BOOK 
OF INVENTIONS 

BY RAY STANNARD BAKER 

Author of 

Bojjs' Book of Inventions Seen in 

Germany 



^ 



FULLY ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 

MCMIII 



\h6 LlBHAi^y Of 



CLAftS Ci XXo No- 
' COPY R 



^'^.i 



C()[)i/ni/]it^ Ifjijo, hi/ 
McCLUHE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



Published, November, 19()3, N 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Miracle of Radium . . . . .3 

Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the New Element 
Discovered by Professor and Madame Curie. 



CHAPTER II 

Flying Machines ...... 27 

Santos-Dumont's Steerable Balloons. 



CHAPTER III 

The Earthquake Measurer . . . , 79 

Professor John Milne's Seismograph. 

CHAPTER IV 

Electrical Furnaces . . . . . .113 

How the Hottest Heat is Produced — Making Diamonds. 

CHAPTER V 

Harnessing the Sun . . . . . .153 

The Solar Motor. 



vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

The Inventor and the Food Problem . . .173 

Fixing of Nitrogen — Experiments of Professor Nobbe. 

CHAPTER Ml 

Marconi and his Great Achievements . . . 207 

New Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy. 

CHAPTER VIH 

Sea-Builders ........ 255 

The Story of Lighthouse Building — Stone-Tower Light- 
houses, Iron Pile Lighthouses, and Steel Cylinder 
Lighthouses. 

CHAPTER IX 

The Newest Electric Light ..... 293 
Peter Cooper Hewitt and his Three Great Inventions 
— ^The Mercury Arc Light— The New Electrical Con- 
verter — The Hewitt Interrupter. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 
Guglielmo Marconi . . . Frontispiece 

M. Curie Explaining the Wonders of Radium at 

the Sorbonne ...... 5 

Dr. Danlos Treating a Lupus Patient with Radi- 
um at the St. Louis Hospital, Paris . .13 

Radium as a Test for Real Diamonds . . .19 

At the approach of Radium pure gems are throvm into great 
hrilliancy^ while imitations remain dull, 

M. and Mme. Curie Finishing the Preparation of 

some Radium . . . . . .25 

M. Alberto Santos-Dumont . . . .29 

Severo's Balloon, the " Pax,^** which on its First 
Ascent at a Height of about 2,000 feet, 
Burst and Exploded, Sending to a Terrible 
Death both M. Severo and his Assistant . 33 

The Trial of Count Zeppelin's Air-Ship, July 2, 

1900 ,37 

M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen . . . .41 

M. Santos-Dumont's First Balloon (Spherical) . 43 

M. Santos-Dumont^s Workshop . . . .45 

-' Santos-Dumont No. 1 '' 49 



viii BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 



Basket of " Santos-Dumont No. 1 *" . 
Shoiohig propeller and motor. 

" Santos-Dumont No. 1 *" . 

Shoioing how it began to fold up in the middle, 

" Santos-Dumont No. 5 *" Rounding Eiffel Tower, 
July 13, 1901 

The Interior of the Aerodrome .... 
Shoioing its construction^ the inflated halloon^ and the pennant 
vnth its mystic letters. 

The Fall into the Courtyard of the Trocadero 

Hotel 

** Santos-Dumont No. 5." 

" Santos-Dumont No. 6 '' — The Prize AVinner 

Air-Ship Pointing almost Vertically I'pward 

Falling to the Sea ..... 

Just Before the Air-Ship Lost all its Gas . 

Losing its Gas and Sinking 

The Balloon Falling to the AVaves 

Boats Around the Ruined Air-Ship . 

Manoeuvring Above the Bay at Monte Carlo 

Professor John Milne .... 

From a photograph hy S. Suzuki^ Kudanzaka^ Tokio. 

Professor Milne''s Sensitive Pendulum, or Seis 
mograph, as it Appears Enclosed in its Pro 
tecting Box ..... 



Page 
52 



65 > 

69 
73 
73 

74 
74 
75 
75 

77 
80 



81 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

Page 
The Sensitive Pendulum, or Seismograph, as it 

Appears with the Protecting Box Removed . 81 

Gifu, Japan, after the Earthquake of 1891 . . 85 

This and the pictures following on pages 89, 101, 111, are from 
Japanese photographs reproduced in " The Great Earth- 
quake in Japan, 1891,'' hy John Milne and W. K. 
Burton, 

The Work of the Great Earthquake of 1891 in 

Neo Valley, Japan . . . . .89 

Diagram Showing Vertical and Horizontal Sec- 
tions of the More Sensitive of Professor 
Milne's Two Pendulums, or Seismographs . 93 

Seismogram of a Borneo Earthquake that Oc- 
curred September 20, 1897 . . .94 

Effect of the Great Earthquake of 1891 on the 

Nagara Gawa Railway Bridge, Japan . . 101 

Pieces of a Submarine Cable Picked Up in the 

Gulf of Mexico in 1888 . . . .108 

The kinks are caused hy seismic disturbances, and they show 
how much distortion a cable can suffer and still remain 
in good electrical condition, as this vms found to be. 

Record made on a Stationary Surface by the 
Vibrations of the Japanese Earthquake of 

July 19, 1891 lU 

Shovnng the complicated character of the motion {common to 
most earthquakes^, and also the course of a point at the 
centre of disturbance. 



X BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Page 
Table of Temperatures . . . . .115 

Mr. E. G. Acheson, One of the Pioneers in the 

Investigation of High Temperatures . . 125 

The Furnace-Room, where Carborundum is Made 131 
'''A greats dingy brick building^ open at the sides like a shed,'' 

Taking Off a Crust of the Furnace at Night . 135 
The light is so intense that you cannot look at it v)ithoiit 
hurting the eyes. 

The Interior of a Furnace as it Appears after the 

Carboiundum has been Taken Out . .143 

Blowing Off 147 

** Not infrequently gas collects^ forming a immature mountain, 
with a crater at its summit^ and blowing a magnificent 
fountain of flame^ lava^ and dense 7ohite vapour high 
into the air, and roaring all the while in a most terri- 
fying manner.'"' 

Side View of the Solar ]\Iotor . . . .155 

Front View of the Los Angeles Solar Motor . 159 

The Brilliant Steam Boiler Glistens in the Centre 163 

The Rear Machinery for Operating the Reflector . 167 

Trees Growing in Water at Professor Nobbe's 

Laboratory . . . . . .187 

Experimenting with Nitrogen in Professor Nobbe"*s 

Laboratory . . . , . . 191 ^ 

Ml-. Charles S. Bradley , . . . .198 

Mr. D. R. Lovejoy 199 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Eight-Inch 10.000-\'olt Arcs Burning the Air for 
Fixing Nitrogen ..... 

Machine for Burning the Air with Electric Arcs 
so as to Produce Nitrates .... 

Marconi. The Sending of an Epoch-Making 
Message . - . 

January 18, 190S, marks the h( (/inning of a neiv era in tele- 
graphic communication. On that day there loas sent by 
Marconi himself from the wireless station at South Well- 
fleet, Cape Cod, Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Corn- 
tvall, England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the message 
— destined soon to he historic^from the President of the 
United States to the King of England. 

Preparing to Fly the Kite which Supported the 
Receiving Wire ..... 

Marconi on the extreme hff. 

Mr. Marconi and his Assistants in Newfoundland: 
Mr. Kemp on the Left, ]Mr. Paget on the 
Right 

They are sitting on a balloon basket, with one of the Baden- 
Powell kites in the background. 

Marconi Transatlantic Station at Wellfleet, Cape 
Cod, Mass. 

At Poole, England . 

Nearer View, South Foreland Station 

Alum Bay Station, Isle of Wight 

Marconi Room, S.S. Philadelphia 



XI 

Page 
200 

201 

206' 



213 



217 



229 
231 
235 
237 
241 



xii BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Page 
Transatlantic High Power, Marconi Station at 

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia .... S47 
Work on the Smith Point Lighthouse Stopped by 

a Violent Storm ..... 254 

Just after the cyUnder had been set in place ^ and while the 
icorkmen ivere harrying to stoio sufficient ballast to secure 
it against a heavy sea, a stornfi forced the attending 
steamer to draw away. One of the barges was almost 
overturned, and a lifeboat teas driven against the cylin- 
der and crushed to pieces. 

Robert Stevenson, Builder of the Famous Bell 
Rock lighthouse, and Author of Important 
Inventions and Improvements in the System 
of Sea Lighting ..... 9,5G 

From a bust by Joseph, now in the Ulrary of Bell Rod- Light- 
house. 

The Bell Rock I^ighthouse, on the Eastern Coast 

of Scotland ^57 

From the painting by Turner. The Bell Bock Lighthouse was 
built by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of Robert Louis 
Stevenson, on the Inchcape Reef, in the North Sea, near 
Dundee, Scotland, in 1807-1810. 

The Pi-esent Lighthouse on Minot's Ledge, near 
the Entrance of Massachusetts Bay, F'ifteen 
Miles Southeast of Boston .... 260 

** Rising .s'heer out of the sea, like a huqe .s'tone can)ton, mouth 
upioard. '' — Longfellow. 

The lighthouse on Stannard Rock, Lake Superioi- 261 
77^ /,y is a stone-tower lighthouse, similar in construction to the 

one built with such difficulty on Spectacle Reef, Lake 

Huron. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

Page 
The Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida . . 264? 

Fourteen-Foot Bank Light Station, Delaware 

Bay, Del. . 268 

The Great Beds Light Station, Raritan Bay, 

N. J. . 270 

A specimen of iron cylinder const7^uction. 

A Storm at the Tillamook Lighthouse, in the 
Pacific, one mile out from Tillamook Flead, 
Oregon 275 

Saving the Cylinder of the Lighthouse at Smith 
Point, Chesapeake Bay, from being Swamped 
in a High Sea ...... 279 

When the builders were towing the unwieldy cylinder out to set 
it in position^ the water became suddenly rough and 
began to fill it. Workmen, at the risk of their lives, 
boarded the cylinder, and by desperate labours succeeded 
in spreading sail canvas over it, and so saved a structure 
that had cost months of labour and thousands of dollars. 

Great AVaves Dashed Entirely Over Them, so that 
They had to Cling for Their Lives to the 
Air-Pipes .285 

In erecting the Smith Point lighthouse, after the cylinder vms 
set up, it had to be forced down fifteen and a half feet 
into the sand. The lives of the men ivho did this, loork- 
ing in the caisson at the bottom of the sea, were abso- 
lutely in the hands of the men loho managed the engine 
and the air-com,pressor at the surface ; and twice these 
latter were entirely deluged by the sea, but still main- 
tained steam and kept everything running as if no sea 
was playing orer tlkein. 



xiv BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Page 

Peter Cooper Hewitt 292' 

With his interrupter. 

Watching a Test of the Hewitt Converter . . 299 

Lord Kelvin in the centre. 

The Hewitt Mercury Vapour Light . . . 305 

The circular piece Just above the switch button is one form of 
^^ boosting coiV which opej^ates for a fraction of a sec- 
ond when the current is first turned on. The tube shown 
Jiere is about an inch in diameter and several feet long. 
Various shapes may be used. Unless broken, the tubes 
never need renewal. 

Testing a Hewitt Converter . . . .311 

The roio of incandescent lights is used, together with a volt- 
meter and ammeter, to measure strength of current, re- 
sistance, and loss in converting. 



BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF 
INVENTIONS 



CHAPTER I 

THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 

Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the Neiv Element 
Discovered hy Professor and Madame Curie 

No substance ever discovered better deserves 
the term "Miracle of Science," given it by a 
famous English experimenter, than radium. 
Here is a little pinch of white powder that 
looks much like common table salt. It is one 
of many similar pinches sealed in little glass 
tubes and owned by Professor Curie, of Paris. 
If you should find one of these little tubes in 
the street you would think it hardly worth 
carrying away, and yet many a one of them 
could not be bought for a small fortune. For 
all the radium in the world to-day could be 
heaped on a single table-spoon; a pound of it 
would be worth nearly a million dollars, or 

3 



4 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

more than three thousand times its weight in 
pure gold. 

Professor and Madame Curie, who discov- 
ered radium, now possess the largest amount 
of any one, but there are small quantities in 
the hands of English and German scientists, 
and perhaps a dozen specimens in America, 
one owned by the American Museum of 
Natural History and several by Mr. W. J. 
Hammer, of New York, who was the first 
American to experiment with the rare and 
precious substance. 

And perhaps it is just as well, at first, not 
to have too much radium, for besides being 
wonderful it is also dangerous. If a pound 
or two could be gathered in a mass it would 
kill every one who came within its influence. 
People might go up and even handle the 
white powder without at the moment feeling 
any ill-effects, but in a week or two the mys- 
terious and dreadful radium influence would 
begin to take efl*ect. Slowly the victim's skin 
would peel ofl*, his body would become one 
great sore, he would fall blind, and finally 
die of paralysis and congestion of the spinal 




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THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 7 

cord. Even the small quantities now in hand 
have severely burned the experimenters. Pro- 
fessor Curie himself has a number of bad 
scars on his hands and arms due to ulcers 
caused by handling radium. And Professor 
Becquerel, in journeying to London, carried 
in his waistcoat pocket a small tube of radium 
to be used in a lecture there. Nothing hap- 
pened at the time, but about two weeks later 
Professor Becquerel observed that the skin 
under his pocket was beginning to redden and 
fall away, and finally a deep and painful sore 
formed there and remained for weeks before 
healing. 

It is just as well, therefore, that scientists 
learn more about radium and how to handle 
and control it before too much is manufac- 
tured. 

But the cost and danger of radium are only 
two of its least extraordinary features. Seen 
in the daylight radium is a commonplace white 
powder, but in the dark it glows like live fire, 
and the purer it is the more it glows. I held 
for a moment one of Mr. Hammer's radium 
tubes, and, the lights being turned off, it 



8 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

seemed like a live coal burning there in my 
hand, and yet I felt no sensation of heat. But 
radium really does give off heat as well as 
light — and gives it off continually without 
losing appreciable weight. And that is what 
seems to scientists a miracle. Imagine a coal 
which should burn day in and day out for 
hundreds of years, always bright, always giv- 
ing off heat and light, and yet not growing 
any smaller, not turning to ashes. That is the 
almost unbelievable property of radium. Pro- 
fessor Curie has specimens which have thus 
been radiating light and heat for several years, 
with practically no loss of weight; and no 
small amount of light and heat either. Pro- 
fessor Curie has found that a given quantity 
of radium will melt its own weight of ice 
every hour, and continue doing «o practically 
for ever. One of his associates has calculated 
that a fixed quantity of radium, after throw- 
ing out heat for 1,000,000,000 years, would 
have lost only one-millionth part of its bulk. 

What is the reason for these extraordinary 
properties? Is it not "perpetual motion"? 
All the great scientists of the world have been 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 9 

trying in vain to answer these questions. Sev- 
eral theories have been advanced, of which I 
shall speak later, but none seems a satisfactory 
explanation. When we know more of radium 
perhaps we shall be better prepared to say 
what it really is, and we may have to unlearn 
many of the great principles of physics and 
chemistry which were seemingly settled for all 
time. Radium would seem, indeed, to defy the 
very law of the conservation of energy. 

The practical mind at once sees radium in 
use as a new source of heat and light for man- 
kind, a furnace that would never have to be 
fed or cleaned, a lamp that would glow per- 
petually — and the time may really come, the 
inventor having taken hold of the wonder that 
the scientist has produced, when many prac- 
tical applications of the new element may be 
devised. At present, however, the scarcity and 
cost and danger of radium will keep it in the 
hands of the experimenter. 

Another astonishing property of radium is 
its power of communicating some of its 
strange qualities to certain substances brought 
within its influence. Mr. Hammer kept his 



10 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

radium tubes for a time in a pasteboard box. 
This being broken, he removed the tubes and 
threw the pasteboard aside. Several days 
later, having occasion to turn off the lights in 
the laboratory, he found that the discarded box 
was glowing there in the dark. It had taken 
up some of the rays from the radium. Nearly 
everything that comes in contact with radium 
thus becomes "radio-active" — even the experi- 
menter's clothes and hands, so that delicate 
instruments are disturbed by the invisible shine 
of the experimenter. Photographs can be 
taken with radium; it also makes the air 
around it a better conductor of electricity. 
And still more marvellous, besides being an 
agency for the destruction of life, as I shall 
show later, it can actually be used in other 
ways to prolong life, and the future may show 
many wonderful uses for it in the treatment 
of disease. Already, in Paris, several cases of 
lupus have been cured with it, and there is evi- 
dence that it will help to restore sight in cer- 
tain cases of blindness. I held a tube of 
radium to my closed eye and was conscious of 
the sensation of light; the same sensation was 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 11 

present when the tube was held to my temple, 
thus showing that the radium has an effect on 
the optic nerve. A little blind girl in New 
York, who had never had the sensation of 
light, began to see a little after one treatment 
with radium, and experiments are still going 
on, but cautiously, for fear that injuries may 
result. 

We now come to the fascinating story of 
the discovery and manufacture of radium. It 
has long been known that certain substances 
are phosphorescent; that is, under the proper 
conditions they glow without apparent heat. 
Everybody has seen ''fox-fire" in the damp 
and decaying woods — a cold light which sci- 
entists have never been able to explain. 

To M. Henri Becquerel of the French In- 
stitute is generally given the credit for hav- 
ing begun the real study of radio-activity, 
although, as in every great discovery and in- 
vention, many other scientists and practical 
electricians had paved the way by their in- 
vestigations. In 1896 M. Becquerel was 
conducting some experiments with various 
phosphorescent substances. He exposed some 



12 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

salts of the metal uranium to the sunlight 
until they became phosphorescent, and then 
tried their effect upon a photographic plate. 

It rained, and he put the plate away in a 
drawer for several days. When he developed 
it he was surprised to find on it a better image 
than sunlight would have made. And thus, 
by a sort of accident, he led up to the discov- 
ery of the Becquerel rays, so called. 

Uranium is extracted from a metal or ore 
called uranite by mineralogists, and popularly 
known as pitch-blende. Every young college 
student who has studied geology or chemistry 
has heard of pitch-blende. 

Two years after BecquereFs discovery of 
the radio-activity of uranium Professor Pierre 
Curie and Madame Curie, of Paris, made the 
discovery that some of the samples of pitch- 
blende which they had were much more power- 
ful than any uranium that they had used. 

Was there, then, something more powerful 
than uranium within the pitch-blende? They 
began to "boil down" the waste rock left at 
the uranium mines, and* found a strange new 
element, related to uranium but different, to 




Dr. Danlos Treating a Lupus Patient with Radium at the 
St. Louis Hospital^ Paris. 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 15 

which Madame Curie gave the name polonium, 
after her native land, Poland. 

Then they did some more boiling down, and 
succeeded in isolating an entirely new sub- 
stance, and the most radio-active yet discov- 
ered — radium. Shortly after that Debierne 
discovered still another radio-active substance, 
to which he gave the name actinium. 

Thus three new elements were added to the 
Hst of the world's substances, and the most 
wonderful of these is radium. In a day, 
almost, the Curies became famous in the Sci- 
entific world, and many of the greatest in- 
vestigators in the world — Lord Kelvin, Sir 
William Crookes, and others — took up the 
study of radium. 

Very rarely have a man and woman worked 
together so perfectly as Professor Curie and 
his wife. Madame Curie was a Polish girl; 
she came to Paris to study, very poor, but pos- 
sessed of rare talents. Her marriage with 
M. Curie was such a union as must have pro- 
duced some fine result. Without his scientific 
learning and vivid imagination it is doubtful 
if radium would ever have been dreamed of, 



16 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

and without her determination and patience 
against detail it is hkely the dream would 
never have been realised. 

One of the chief problems to be met in find- 
ing the secrets of radium is the great difficulty 
and expense, in the first place, of getting any 
of the substance to experiment with. The 
Curies have had to manufacture all they 
themselves have used. In the first place, 
pitch-blende, which closely resembles iron in 
appearance, is not plentiful. The best of it 
comes from Bohemia, but it is also found in 
Saxony, Norway, Egypt, and in North Caro- 
lina, Colorado, and Utah. It appears in small 
lumps in veins of gold, silver, and mica, and 
sometimes in granite. 

Comparatively speaking, it is easy to get 
uranium from pitch-blende. But to get the 
radium from the residues is a much more com- 
plicated task. According to Professor Curie, 
it is necessary to refine about 5,000 tons of 
uranium residues to get a kilogramme — or 
about 2.2 pounds — of radium. 

It is hardly surprising, therefore, consider- 
ing the enormous amount of raw material 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 17 

which must be handled, that the cost of this 
rare mineral should be high. It has been 
said that there is more gold in sea-water than 
radium in the earth. Professor Curie has an 
extensive plant at Ivry, near Paris, where the 
refuse dust brought from the uranium mines 
is treated by complicated processes, which 
finally yield a powder or crystals containing 
a small amount of radium. These crystals 
are sent to the laboratory of the Curies where 
the final delicate processes of extraction are 
carried on by the professor and his wife. 

And, after all, pure metallic radium is 
not obtained. It could be obtained, and Pro- 
fessor Curie has actually made a very small 
quantity of it, but it is unstable, immediately 
oxidised by the air and destroyed. So it is 
manufactured only in the form of chloride and 
bromide of radium. The "strength" of radi- 
um is measured in radio-activity, in the power 
of emitting rays. So we hear of radium of 
an intensity of 45 or 7,000 or 300,000. This 
method of measurement is thus explained. 
Taking the radio-activity of uranium as the 
unit, as one, then a certain specimen of radium 



18 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

is said to be 45 or 7,000 or 300,000 times as 
intense, to have so many times as much radio- 
activity. The radium of highest intensity in 
this country now is 300,000, but the Curies 
have succeeded in producing a specimen of 
1,500,000 intensity. This is so powerful and 
dangerous that it must be kept wrapped in 
lead, which has the effect of stopping some of 
the rays. Rock-salt is another substance which 
hinders the passage of the rays. 

English scientists have devised a curious 
little instrument, called the spinthariscope, 
which allows one actually to see the emana- 
tions from radium and to realise as never 
before the extraordinary atomic disintegration 
that is going on ceaselessly in this strange 
metal. The spinthariscope is a small micro- 
scope that allows one to look at a tiny frag- 
ment of radiimi supported on a little wire over 
a screen. 

The experiment must be made in a dark- 
ened room after the eye has gradually acquired 
its greatest sensitiveness to light. Looking 
intently through the lenses the screen appears 
like a heaven of flashing meteors among which 




Radium as a Test for Real Diamonds. 

At the approach of Radium pure (/ems are thrown into great hrll- 
liancj/y while imitations remain dull. 

19 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 21 

stars shine forth suddenly and die away. Near 
the central radium speck the fire-shower is 
most brilliant, while toward the rim of the cir- 
cle it grows fainter. . And this goes on con- 
tinuously as the metal throws oiF its rays like 
myriads of bursting, blazing stars. M. Curie 
has spoken of this vision, really contained 
within the area of a two-cent piece, as one of 
the most beautiful and impressive he ever 
witnessed; it was as if he had been allowed to 
assist at the birth of* a universe. Radium 
emits radiations, that is, it shoots off particles 
of itself into space at such terrific speed that 
92,500 miles a second is considered a small 
estimate. Yet, in spite of the fact that this 
waste goes on eternally and at such enormous 
velocity, the actual loss sustained by the radium 
is, as I have said, infinitesimal. 

We now come to one of the most interesting 
phases of the whole subject of radium — that is, 
the influence which its strange rays have upon 
animal life. Mr. Cleveland MofFett, to whom 
I am indebted for the facts of the following 
experiments, recently visited M. Danysz, of 
the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who has made 



22 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

some wonderful investigations in this branch 
of science. M. Danysz has tried the eiFect of 
radium on mice, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and 
other animals, and on plants, and he found 
that if exposed long enough they all died, 
often first losing their fur and becoming blind. 
But the most startling experiment per- 
formed thus far at the Pasteur Institute is one 
undertaken by M. Danysz, February 3, 1903, 
when he placed three or four dozen little larvae 
that live in flour in a glass flask, where they 
were exposed for a few hours to the rays of 
radium. He placed a like number of larvae 
in a control-flask, where there was no radium, 
and he left enough flour in each flask for the 
larvae to live upon. After several weeks it was 
found that most of the larvse in the radium 
flask had been killed, but that a few of them 
had escaped the destructive action of the rays 
by crawling away to distant corners of the 
flask, where they were still living. But they 
were living as larvce^ not as moths, whereas in 
the natural course they should have become 
moths long before, as was seen by the control- 
flask, where the larvae had all changed into 



THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 2S 

moths, and these had hatched their eggs into 
other larvse, and these had produced other 
moths. All of which made it clear that the 
radium rays had arrested the development of 
these little worms. 

More weeks passed, and still three or four 
of the larvae lived, and four full months after 
the original exposure one larva was still alive 
and wriggling, while its contemporary larvse 
in the other jar had long since passed away 
as aged moths, leaving generations of moths' 
eggs and larvas to witness this miracle, for 
here was a larva, venerable among his kind, 
that had actually lived through three times 
the span of life accorded to his fellows and 
that still showed no sign of changing into a 
moth. It was very much as if a young man 
of twenty-one should keep the appearance of 
twenty-one for two hundred and fifty years! 

Not less remarkable than these are some 
recent experiments made by M. Bohn at the 
biological laboratories of the Sorbonne, his 
conclusions being that radium may so far 
modify various lower forms of life as to actu- 
ally produce new species of "monsters," ab- 



24 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

normal deviations from the original type of 
the species. Furthermore, he has been able to 
accomplish with radium what Professor Loeb 
did with salt solutions — that is, to cause the 
growth of unfecundated eggs of the sea- 
urchin, and to advance these through several 
stages of their development. In other words, 
he has used radium to create life where there 
would have been no life but for this strange 
stimulation. 

So much for the wonders of radium. We 
seem, indeed, to be on the border-land of still 
more wonderful discoveries. Perhaps these 
radium investigations will lead to some expla- 
nation of that great question in science, "What 
is electricity?" — and that, who can say, may 
solve that profounder problem, ''What rs 
hfe?" 

At present there are two theories as to the 
source of energy in radium, thus stated by 
Professor Curie: 

''Where is the source of this energy? Both 
Madame Curie and myself are unable to go 
beyond hypotheses; one of these consists in 
supposing the atoms of radium evolving and 



THE MIRACLE OP RADIUM 



25 



transforming into another simple body, and, 
despite the extreme slowness of that trans- 
formation, which cannot be located during a 




M. and Mme. Curie Finishing the Preparation of some 

Radium. 

year, the amount of energy involved in that 
transformation is tremendous. 

"The second hypothesis consists in the sup- 



26 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

position that radium is capable of capturing 
and utilising some radiations of unknown na- 
ture which cross space without our knowl- 
edge." 



CHAPTER II 

FLYING MACHINES* 

Santos-Dumonfs Steerable Balloons 

Among the inventors engaged in building 
flying machines the most famous, perhaps, is 
M. Santos-Dumont, whose thriUing adven- 
tures and noteworthy successes have given him 
world-wide fame. He was the first, indeed, 
to build a balloon that was really steerable 
with any degree of certainty, winning a prize 
of $20,000 for driving his great air-ship over 
a certain specified course in Paris and bring- 
ing it back to the starting-point within a 
specified time. Another experimenter who 
has had some degree of success is the German, 
Count Zeppelin, who guided a huge air-ship 
over Lake Geneva, Switzerland, in 1901. 

* In the first ** Boys' Book of Inventions/' the author devoted 
a chapter entitled ** Through the Air " to the interesting work of 
the inventors of flying machines who have experimented with 

27 



28 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Carl E. JNIyers, an American, an expert bal- 
loonist, has also built balloons of small size 
which he has been able to steer. And men- 
tion must also be made of M. Severo, the 
Frenchman, whose ship. Pax, exploded in the 
air on its first trip, dropping the inventor and 
his assistant hundreds of feet downward to 
their death on the pavements of Paris. 

It will be most interesting and instructive 
to consider especially the work of Santos- 
Dumont, for he has been not only the most 
successful in making actual flights of any of 
the inventors who have taken up this great 
problem of air navigation, but his adventures 
have been most romantic and thrilling. In 
five years' time he has built and operated no 
fewer than ten great air-ships which he has 
sailed in various parts of Europe and in 
America. He has even crowned his experi- 
ences with more than one shipwreck in the 

aeroplanes ; that is, soaring machines modelled after the wings of a 
bird. The work of Professor S. P. Langley with his marvellous 
Aerodrome, and that of Hiram Maxim and of Otto Lilienthal, were 
given especial consideration. In the present chapter attention is 
directed to an entirely different class of flying machines— the 
steerable balloons. 




M. Alberto Santos-Dumont. 



FLYING MACHINES 31 

air, an adventure by the side of which an or- 
dinary sea-wreck is tame indeed, and he has 
escaped with his hfe as a result not only of 
good fortune but of real daring and presence 
of mind in the face of danger. 

For an inventor, M. Santos-Dumont is a 
rather extraordinary character. The typical 
inventor — at least so we think — is poor, starts 
poor at least, and has a struggle to rise. M. 
Santos-Dumont has always had plenty of 
means. The inventor is always first a dream- 
er, we think. M. Santos-Dumont is first a 
thoroughly practical man, an engineer with a 
good knowledge of science, to which he adds 
the imagination of the inventor and the keen 
love and daring of the sportsman and adven- 
turer, without which his experiments could 
never have been carried through. 

It would seem, indeed, that nature had es- 
pecially equipped M. Santos-Dumont for his 
work in aerial navigation. Supposing an in- 
ventor, having all the mental equipment of 
Santos-Dumont, the ideas, the energy, the 
means — supposing such a man had weighed 
two hundred pounds! He would have had to 



32 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

build a very large ship to carry his own weight, 
and all his problems would have been more 
complex, more difficult. Nature made Santos- 
Dumont a very small, slim, slight man, weigh- 
ing hardly more than one hundred pounds, but 
very active and muscular. The first time I 
ever saw him, in Crystal Palace, London, 
where he was setting up one of his air-ships 
in a huge gallery, I thought him at first glance 
to be some boy, a possible spectator, who was 
interested in flying machines. His face, bare 
and shaven, looked youthful; he wore a nar- 
row-brimmed straw hat and was dressed in 
the height of fashion. One would not have 
guessed him to be the inventor. A moment 
later he had his coat off and was showing his 
men how to put up the great fan-like rudder 
of the ship which loomed above us like some 
enormous Rugby football, and then one saw 
the power that was in him. Brazilian by na- 
tionality, he has a dark face, large dark eyes, 
an alertness of step and an energetic way 
of talking. His boyhood was spent on his 
father's extensive coffee plantation in Brazil; 
his later years mostly in Paris, though he has 



FLYING MACHINES S5 

been a frequent visitor to England and Amer- 
ica. He speaks Spanish, French, and Eng- 
hsh with equal fluency. Indeed, hearing his 
English one would say that he must certainly 
have had his training in an English-speaking 
country, though no one would mistake him in 
appearance for either English or American, 
for he is very much a Latin in face and form. 
One finds him most unpretentious, modest, 
speaking freely of his inventions, and yet 
never taking to himself any undue credit. 

Santos-Dumont is still a very young man to 
have accomplished so much. He was born in 
Brazil, July 20, 1873. From his earliest boy- 
hood he was interested in kites and dreamed of 
being able to fly. He says: 

"I cannot say at what age I made my first 
kites; but I rememl)er how my comrades used 
to tease me at our game of Tigeon flies' ! All 
the children gather round a table, and the 
leader calls out: ^Pigeon flies! Hen flies! 
Crow flies! Bee flies!' and so on; and at each 
call we were supposed to raise our fingers. 
Sometimes, however, he would call out: 'Dog 
flies! Fox flies!' or some other like impossi- 



36 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

bility, to catch us. If any one should raise a 
finger, he was made to pay a forfeit. Now 
my playmates never failed to wink and smile 
mockingly at me when one of them called 
'Man flies!' For at the word I would always 
lift my finger very high, as a sign of absolute 
conviction; and I refused with energy to pay 
the forfeit. The more they laughed at me, the 
happier I was." 

Of course he read Jules Verne's stories and 
was carried away in imagination in that au- 
thor's wonderful balloons and flying machines. 
He also devoured the history of aerial naviga- 
tion which he found in the works of Camille 
Flammarion and Wilfrid de Fonvielle. He 
says, further: 

"At an early age I was taught the princi- 
ples of mechanics by my father, an engineer 
of the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufac- 
tures of Paris. From childhood I had a pas- 
sion for making calculations and inventing; 
and from my tenth year I was accustomed to 
handle the powerful and heavy machines of 
our factories, and drive the compound locomo- 
tives on our plantation railroads. I was con- 
stantly taken up with the desire to lighten 




J^^^ 




The Trial of Count Zeppelin's Air-Ship, July 2, 1900. 



FLYING MACHINES 39 

their parts; and I dreamed of air-ships and 
flying machines. The fact that up to the end 
of the nineteenth century those who occupied 
themselves with aerial navigation passed for 
crazy, rather pleased than offended me. It is 
incredible and yet true that in the kingdom of 
the wise, to which all of us flatter ourselves we 
belong, it is always the fools who finish by 
being in the right. I had read that Montgol- 
fiere was thought a fool until the day when 
he stopped his insulters' mouths by launching 
the first spherical balloon into the heavens." 

Upon going to Paris Santos-Dumont at 
once took up the work of making himself fa- 
miliar with ballooning in all of its practical 
aspects. He saw that if he were ever to build 
an air-ship he must first know all there was to 
know about balloon-making, methods of fill- 
ing with gas, lifting capacities, the action of 
balloons in the air, and all the thousand and 
one things connected with ordinary balloon- 
ing. And Paris has always been the centre of 
this information. He regards this prelimi- 
nary knowledge as indispensable to every air- 
ship builder. He says: 



40 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

''Before launching out into the construction 
of air-ships I took pains to make myself fa- 
mihar with the handhng of spherical balloons. 
I did not hasten, but took plenty of time. In 
all, I made something hke thirty ascensions; 
at first as a passenger, then as my own cap- 
tain, and at last alone. Some of these spheri- 
cal balloons I rented, others I had constructed 
for me. Of such I have owned at least six 
or eight. And I do not believe that with- 
out svich previous study and experience a man 
is capable of succeeding with an elongated 
balloon, whose handling is so much more deli- 
cate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship, 
it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary 
balloon the conditions of the atmospheric me- 
dium; to have become acquainted with the ca- 
prices of the wind, now caressing and now bru- 
tal, and to have gone thoroughly into the diffi- 
culties of the ballast problem, from the triple 
point of view of starting, of equilibrium in 
the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. 
To go up in an ordinar^^ balloon, at least a 
dozen times, seems to me an indispensable pre- 
liminary for acquiring an exact notion of the 




M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen. 



FLYING MACHINES 



43 



requisites for the construction and handling of 
an elongated balloon, furnished with its mo- 
tor and propeller." 

His first ascent in a balloon was made in 
1897, when he was 24 years old, as a passen- 






M. Santos-Dumont's First Balloon (Spherical). 

ger with M. Machuron, who had then just re- 
turned from the Arctic regions, where he had 
helped to start Andree on his ill-fated voyage 
in search of the North Pole. He fovmd the 
sensations delightful, being so pleased with the 
experience that he subsequently secured a small 



44 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

balloon of his own, in which he made several 
ascents. He also climbed the Alps in order to 
learn more of the condition of the air at high 
altitudes. 

In 1898 he set about experimentation in the 
building of a real air-ship or steerable balloon. 
Efforts had been made in this direction by for- 
mer inventors, but with small success. As far 
back as 1852 Henri GifFord made the first of 
the familiar cigar-shaped balloons, trying 
steam as a motive power, but he soon found 
that an engine strong enough to propel the 
balloon was too heavy for the balloon to lift. 
That simple failure discouraged experimenters 
for a long time. In 1877 Dupuy de Lome tried 
steering a balloon by man power, but the man 
was not strong enough. In 1883 another 
Frenchman, Tissandier, experimented with 
electricity, but, as his batteries had to be light 
enough to be taken up in the balloon, they 
proved effective only in helping to weigh it 
down to earth again. Krebs and Renard, mili- 
tary aeronauts, succeeded better with elec- 
tricity, for they could make a small circuit with 
their air-ship, provided only that no air was 



FLYING MACHINES 47 

stirring. Enthusiasts cried out that the prob- 
lem was solved, but the two aeronauts them- 
selves, as good mathematicians, figured out 
that they would have to have a motor eight 
times more powerful than their own, and that 
without any increase in weight, which was an 
impossibility at that time. 

Santos-Dumont saw plainly that none of 
these methods would work. What then was 
he to try? Why, simple enough: the petro- 
leum motor from his automobile. The recent 
development of the motor-vehicle had pro- 
duced a light, strong, durable motor. It was 
Santos-Dumont's first great claim to origi- 
nality that he should have applied this to the 
balloon. He discovered no new principles, in- 
vented nothing that could be patented. The 
cigar-shaped balloon had long been used, so 
had the petroleum motor, but he put them to- 
gether. And he did very much more than 
that. The very essence of success in aerial 
navigation is to secure light weight with great 
strength and power. The inventor who can 
build the lightest machine, which is also strong, 
will, other things being equal, have the great- 



48 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

est success. It is to Santos-Dumont's great 
credit that he was able to build a very light 
motor, that also gave a good horse-power, and 
a light balloon that was also very strong. The 
one great source of danger in using the pe- 
troleum motor in connection with a balloon is 
that the sparking of the motor will set fire to 
the inflammable hydrogen gas with which the 
balloon is filled, causing a terrible explosion. 
This, indeed, is what is thought to have caused 
the mortal mishap to Severo and his balloon. 
But Santos-Dumont was able to surmount this 
and many other difficulties of construction. 

The inventor finally succeeded in making 
a motor — remarkable at that time — which, 
weighing only 66 pounds, would produce 3^ 
horse-power. It is easy to understand why a 
petroleum motor is such a power-producer for 
its size. The greater part of its fuel is in the 
air itself, and the air is all around the balloon, 
ready for use. The aeronaut does not have to 
take it up with him. That proportion of his 
fuel that he must carry, the petroleum, is com- 
paratively insignificant in weight. A few 
figures will prove interesting. Two and one- 




^ Santos- Dumont No. 1 



FLYING MACHINES 51 

half gallons of gasoline, weighing 15 pounds, 
will drive a 2^ horse-power autocyele 94 miles 
in four hours. Santos-Dumont's balloon 
needs less than 5^ gallons for a three hours' 
trip. This weighs but 37 pounds, and occu- 
pies a small cigar-shaped brass reservoir near 
the motor of his machine. An electric battery 
of the same horse-power would weigh 2,695 
pounds. 

Santos-Dumont tested his new motor very 
thoroughly by attaching it to a tricycle with 
which he made some record runs in and around 
Paris. Having satisfied himself that it was 
thoroughly serviceable he set about making 
the balloon, cigar-shaped, 82 feet long. 

''To keep within the limit of weight," he 
says, ''I first gave up the network and the outer 
cover of the ordinary balloon. I considered 
this sort of second envelope, holding the first 
within it, to be superfluous, and even harmful, 
if not dangerous. To the envelope proper I 
attached the suspension-cords of my basket di- 
rectly, by means of small wooden rods intro- 
duced into horizontal hems, sewed on both 
sides along the stuff of the balloon for a great 



52 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

part of its length. Again, in order not to pass 
the 66 pounds weight, including varnish, I was 
obHged to choose Japan silk that was extreme- 
ly fine, but fairly resisting. Up to this time 
no one had ever thought of using this for bal- 




Basket of ^^ Santos- Dumont No. 1." 
Showing propeller and motor. 

loons intended to carry up an aeronaut, but 
only for little balloons carrying light register- 
ing apparatus for investigations in the upper 
air. 



PLYING MACHINES 5d 

"I gave the order for this balloon to M. La- 
chambre. At first he refused to take it, say- 
ing that such a thing had never been made, 
and that he would not be responsible for my 
rashness. I answered that I would not change 
a thing in the plan of the balloon, if I had to 
sew it with my own hands. At last he agreed 
to sew and varnish the balloon as I desired." 

After repeated trials of his motor in the 
basket — which he suspended in his workshop 
— and the making of a rudder of silk he was 
able, in September, 1898, to attempt real fly- 
ing. But, after rising successfully in the air, 
the weight of the machinery and his own body 
swung beneath the fragile balloon was so great 
that while descending from a considerable 
height the balloon suddenly sagged down in 
the middle and began to shut up like a port- 
folio. 

"At that moment," he said, "I thought that 
all was over, the more so as the descent, which 
had already become rapid, could no longer be 
checked by any of the usual means on board, 
where nothing worked. 

''The descent became a rapid fall. Luckily, 



54 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

I was falling in the neighborhood of the soft, 
grassy pelouse of the Longchamps race- 




^'^Santos-Dumont No. 1." 
Shovnng hoiv it began to fold up in the middle, 

course, where some big boys were flying kites. 
A sudden idea struck me. I cried to them to 



FLYING MACHINES 55 

grasp the end of my 100-meter guide-rope, 
which had akeady touched the ground, and to 
run as fast as they could with it against the 
wind! They were bright young fellows, and 
they grasped the idea and the guide-rope at 
the same lucky instant. The effect of this help 
in extremis was immediate, and such as I had 
expected. By this manoeuvre we lessened the 
velocity of the fall, and so avoided what would 
otherwise have been a terribly rough shaking 
up, to say the least. I was saved for the first 
time. Thanking the brave boys, who contin- 
ued to aid me to pack everything into the air- 
ship's basket, I finally secured a cab and took 
the relic back to Paris." 

His life was thus saved almost miraculously; 
but the accident did not deter him from going 
forward immediately with other experiments. 
The next year, 1899, he built a new air-ship 
called Santos-Dumont II., and made an ascen- 
sion with it, but it dissatisfied him and he at 
once began with Santos-Dumont III., with 
which he made the first trip around the Eiffel 
Tower. 

He now made ready to compete for the 



56 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Deutsch prize of $20,000. The winning of 
this prize demanded that the trip from Saint- 
Cloud to the Eiffel Tower, around it and back 
to the starting place, a distance of some eight 
miles, should be made in half an hour. For 
this purpose he finished a much larger air-ship, 
Santos-Dumont V., in 1901. After a trial, 
made on July 12, which was attended by sev- 
eral accidents, the inventor decided to make 
a start early on the following morning, July 
13. As early as four o'clock he was ready, and 
a crowd had begun to gather in the park. 

At 6.20 the great sliding doors of the bal- 
loon-house were pushed open, and the massive 
inflated occupant was towed out into the open 
space of the park. The big pointed nose of the 
balloon and its fish-like belly resembled a shark 
gliding with lazy craft from a shadow into 
light waters. In the basket of the car stood 
the coatless aeronaut, who laughed and chat- 
ted like a boy with the crowd around him. 

From the very first the conditions did not 
show themselves favourable for the attempt. 
The wind was blowing at the rate of six or 
seven yards a second. The change of tempera- 



w^ 




' Santos-Dumont No. 5 " Rounding Eittel Tower, July 13, 

1001. 



FLYING MACHINES 59 

ture from the balloon-house to the cool morn- 
ing air had somewhat condensed the hydrogen 
gas of the balloon, so that one end flapped 
about in a flabby manner. Air was pumped 
into the air reservoir, inside the balloon, but 
still the desired rigidity was not attained. But, 
more discouraging yet, when the motor was 
started, its continuous explosions gave to the 
practised ear signs of mechanical discord. 

Nevertheless, Santos-Dumont, with his 
sleeves rolled up, fixed himself in his basket. 
His eye took a careful survey of the entire air- 
ship lest some preliminary had been over- 
looked. He counted the ballast bags under 
his feet in the basket, he looked to the canvas 
pocket of loose sand at either hand, then saw 
to his guide-rope. 

There is a very great deal to look after in 
managing such a ship, and it requires a calm 
head and a steady hand to do it. 

''Near the saddle on which I sat," he writes, 
"were the ends of the cords and other means 
for controlling the diff*erent parts of the mech- 
anism — the electric sparking of the motor, the 
regulation of the carburetter, the handling of 



60 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

the rudder, ballast, and the shifting weights 
(consisting of the guide-rope and bags of 
sand), the managing of the balloon's valves, 
and the emergency rope for tearing open the 
balloon. It may easily be gathered from this 
enumeration that an air-ship, even as simple 
as my own, is a very complex organism; and 
the work incumbent on the aeronaut is no 
sinecure." 

Several friends shook his hand, among them 
Mr. Deutsch. The place was very still as the 
man holding the guide-rope awaited the signal 
to let go. Then the little man in the basket 
above them raised his hands and shouted. 

At first it did not look like a race against 
time. The balloon rose sluggishly, and Santos- 
Dumont had to dump out bag after bag of 
sand, till finally the guide-rope was clear of 
the trees. All this gave him no opportunity to 
think of his direction, and he was drifting to- 
ward Versailles; but while yet over the Seine 
he pulled his rudder ropes taut. Then slowly, 
gracefully, the enormous spindle veered round 
and pointed its nose toward the Eiffel Tower. 
The fans spun energetically, and the air-ship 




The Interior of the Aerodrome. 

Showing its construction^ the inflated balloon^ and the pennant with 
its mystic letters. 



FLYING MACHINES 6S 

settled down to business-like travelling. It 
marked a straight, decided line for its goal, 
then followed the chosen route with a consid- 
erable speed. Soon the chug-chugging of the 
motor could be heard no longer by the specta- 
tors, and the balloon and car grew smaller and 
smaller in its halo of light smoke. Those in 
the park saw only the screw and the rear of the 
balloon, like the stern of a steamer in dry dock. 
Before long only a dot remained against the 
sky. Gradually he came nearer again, almost 
returning to the park, but the wind drove him 
back across the river Seine. Suddenly the mo- 
tor stopped, and the whole air-ship was seen to 
fall heavily toward the earth. The crowd 
raced away expecting to find Santos-Dumont 
dead and his air-ship a wreck. But they found 
him on his feet, with his hands in his pockets, 
reflectively looking up at his air-ship among 
the top branches of some chestnut trees in the 
grounds of Baron Edmund de Rothschild, 
Boulevard de Boulogne. 

"This," he says, ' 'was near the hotel of Prin- 
cesse Ysabel, Comtesse d'Eu, who sent up to 
me in my tree a champagne lunch, with an in- 



64 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

vitation to come and tell her the story of my 
trip. 

"When my story was over, she said to me: 

" 'Your evolutions in the air made me think 
of the flight of our great birds of Brazil. I 
hope that you will succeed for the glory of our 
common country.' " 

And an examination showed that the air- 
ship was practical^ uninjured. 

So he escaped death a second time. Less 
than a month later he had a still more terrible 
mishap, best related in his own words. He 
says : 

"And now I come to a terrible day — August 
8, 1901. At 6.30 A.M., I started for the Eiffel 
Tower again, in the presence of the committee, 
duly convoked. I turned the goal at the end of 
nine minutes, and took my way back to Saint- 
Cloud; but my balloon was losing hydrogen 
through the automatic valves, the spring of 
which had been accidentally weakened; and it 
shrank visibly. All at once, while over the for- 
tifications of Paris, near La Muette, the screw- 
propeller touched and cut the suspension-cords, 
which were sagging behind. I was obliged to 




■h 



The Fall into the Courtyard of the Trocadero liotcl. 
*^ Santos-Dumont No. 5 J* 



FLYING MACHINES 67 

stop the motor instantly ; and at once I saw my 
air-ship drift straight back to the Eiffel 
Tower. I had no means of avoiding the terri- 
ble danger, except to wreck myself on the roofs 
of the Trocadero quarter. Without hesitation 
I opened the manoeuvre-valve, and sent my 
balloon downward. 

"At 32 metres (106 feet) above the ground, 
and with the noise of an explosion, it struck 
the roof of the Trocadero Hotels. The bal- 
loon-envelope was torn to rags, and fell into 
the courtyard of the hotels, while I remained 
hanging 15 metres (50 feet) above the ground 
in my wicker basket, which had been turned 
almost over, but was supported by the keel. 
The keel of the Santos-Dumont V. saved my 
life that day. 

"After some minutes a rope was thrown 
down to me ; and, helping myself with feet and 
hands up the wall (the few narrow windows 
of which were grated like those of a prison), 
I was hauled up to the roof. The firemen 
from Passy had watched the fall of the air- 
ship from their observatory. They, too, 
hastened to the rescue. It was impossible to 



68 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

disengage the remains of the balloon-envelope 
and suspension apparatus except in strips and 
pieces. 

"My escape was narrow; but it was not 
from the particular danger always present to 
my mind during this period of my experi- 
ments. The position of the Eiffel Tower as 
a central landmark, visible to everybody from 
considerable distances, makes it a unique win- 
ning-post for an aerial race. Yet this does 
not alter the other fact that the feat of round- 
ing the Eiffel Tower possesses a unique ele- 
ment of danger. What I feared when on the 
ground — I had no time to fear while in the 
air — was that, by some mistake of steering, 
or by the influence of some side-wind, I might 
be dashed against the Tower. The impact 
would burst my balloon, and I should fall to 
the ground like a stone. Though I never seek 
to fly at a great height — on the contrary, I 
hold the record for low altitude in a free bal- 
loon — in passing over Paris I must necessarily 
move above all its chimney-pots and steeples. 
The Eiffel Tower was my one danger — yet 
it was my winning-post! 

"But in the air I have no time to fear. I 









"Santos-Duinoiit .Nu. u — ^ihe Prize Winner. 



FLYING MACHINES 71 

have always kept a cool head. Alone in the 
air-ship, I am always very busy. I must not 
let go the rudder for a single instant. Then 
there is the strong joy of commanding. What 
does it feel like to sail in a dirigible balloon? 
While the wind was carrying me back to the 
Eiffel Tower I realised that I might be killed; 
but I did not feel fear. I was in no personal 
inconvenience. I knew my resources. I was 
excessively occupied. I have felt fear while 
in the air, yes, miserable fear joined to pain; 
but never in a dirigible balloon." 

Even this did not daunt him. That very 
night he ordered a new air-ship, Santos-Du- 
mont VI., and it was ready in twenty-two 
days. The new balloon had the shape of an 
elongated ellipsoid, 32 metres (105 feet) on 
its great axis, and 6 metres (20 feet) on its 
short axis, terminated fore and aft by cones. 
Its capacity was 605 cubic metres (21,362 
cubic feet), giving it a lifting power of 620 
kilos (1,362 pounds). Of this, 1,100 pounds 
were represented by keel, machinery, and his 
own weight, leaving a net lifting-power of 
120 kilos (261 pounds). 



72 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

On October 19, 1901, he made another at- 
tempt to round the Eiffel Tower, and was at 
last successful in winning the $20,000 prize. 
Following this great feat, Santos-Dumont 
continued his experiments at JNIonte Carlo, 
where he was wrecked over the Mediterranean 
Sea and escaped only by presence of mind, 
and he is still continuing his work. 

The future of the dirigible balloon is open 
to debate. Santos-Dumont himself does not 
think there is much likelihood that it will 
ever have much commercial use. A balloon 
to carry many passengers would have to be 
so enormous that it could not support the 
machinery necessary to propel it, especially 
against a strong wind. But he does believe 
that the steerable balloon will have great im- 
portance in war time. He says: 

"I have often been asked what present 
utility is to be expected of the dirigible bal- 
loon when it becomes thoroughly practicable. 
I have never pretended that its commercial 
possibilities could go far. The question of the 
air-ship in war, however, is otherwise. Mr. 
Hiram Maxim has declared that a flying 



STORY OF AN AIR-SHIP WRECK 73 






Air-Ship Pointing almost Vertically Upward. 





Falling to the Sea. 



74 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 




Just Before the Air-Ship Lost all its Gas. 




Losing its Gas and Sinking. 



STORY OF AN AIRSHIP WRECK 75 




S^"" 



The Balloon Falling to the Waves. 




Boats Around the Ruined Air-Ship. 



76 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

machine in South Africa would have been 
worth four times its weight in gold. Henri 
Rochefort has said: 'The day when it is estab- 
lished that a man can direct an air-ship in a 
given direction and cause it to manoeuvre as he 
wills ... there will remain little for the 
nations to do but to lay down their arms.' " 

But such experiments as Santos-Dumont's, 
whether they result immediately in producing 
an air-ship of practical utility in commerce or 
not, have great value for the facts which they 
are establishing as to the possibility of bal- 
loons, of motors, of light construction, of air 
currents, and moreover they add to the world's 
sum total of experiences a fine, clean sport in 
which men of daring and scientific knowledge 
show what men can do. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 

Professor John Milne's Seismograph 

Of all strange inventions, the earthquake re- 
corder is certainly one of the most remark- 
able and interesting. A terrible earthquake 
shakes down cities in Japan, and sixteen min- 
utes later the professor of earthquakes, in his 
quiet little observatory in England, measures 
its extent — almost, indeed, takes a picture of 
it. Actual waves, not unlike the waves of the 
sea blown up by a hurricane, have travelled 
through or around half the earth in this brief 
time ; vast mountain ranges, cities, plains, and 
oceans have been heaved to their crests and 
then allowed to sink back again into their 
former positions. And some of these earth- 
quake waves which sweep over the solid earth 
are three feet high, so that the whole of New 

79 



80 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

York, perhaps, rises bodily to that height and 
then sHdes over the crest hke a skiff on an 
ocean swell. 

At first glance this seems almost too strange 
and wonderful to believe, and yet this is only 




Professor John Milne. 
From a photograph by S. Suzuki, Kudanzaka, Tokio, 

the beginning of the wonders which the earth- 
quake camera — or the seismograph (earth- 
quake writer, as the scientists call it) — has 
been disclosing. 

The earthquake professor who has worked 




Professor Milne's Sensitive Pendulum^ or Seismograph^ 
as it Appears Enclosed in its Protecting Box. 







'mm 



The Sensitive Pendulum^ or Seismograph^ as it Appears 
with the Protecting Box Removed. 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 83 

such scientific magic is John Milne. He lives 
in a quaint old house in the little Isle of 
Wight, not far from Osborne Castle, where 
Queen Victoria made her home part of the 
year. Not long ago he was a resident of 
Japan and professor of seismology (the sci- 
ence of earthquakes) at the University of 
Tokio, where he made his first discoveries 
about earthquakes, and invented marvellously 
delicate machines for measuring and photo- 
graphing them thousands of miles away. 
Professor Milne is an Englishman by birth, 
but, like many another of his countrymen, he 
has visited some of the strangest nooks and 
corners of the earth. He has looked for coal 
in Newfoundland; he has crossed the rugged 
hills of Iceland; he has been up and down the 
length of the United States; he has hunted 
wild pigs in Borneo ; and he has been in India 
and China and a hundred other out-of-the- 
way places, to say nothing of measuring earth- 
quakes in Japan. Professor Milne laid the 
foundation of his unusual career in a thor- 
ough education at King's College, London, 
and at the School of Mines. By fortunate 



84 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

chance, soon after his graduation, he met 
Cyrus Field, the famous American, to whom 
the world owes the beginnings of its present 
ocean cable system. He was then just 
twenty-one, young and raw, but plucky. He 
thought he was prepared for anything the 
world might bring him ; but when Field asked 
him one Friday if he could sail for New- 
foundland the next Tuesday, he was so taken 
with astonishment that he hesitated, where- 
upon Field leaned forward and looked at him 
in a way that Milne has never forgotten. 

"My young friend, I suppose you have read 
that the world was made in six days. Now, 
do you mean to tell me that, if this whole 
world was made in six days, you can't get to- 
gether the few things you need in four?" 

And Milne sailed the next Tuesday to be- 
gin his lifework among the rough hills of 
Newfoundland. Then came an offer from 
the Japanese Government, and he went to the 
land of earthquakes, little dreaming that he 
would one day be the greatest authority in the 
world on the subject of seismic disturbances. 
His first experiments — and they were made 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 87 

as a pastime rather than a serious undertaking 
— were curiously simple. He set up rows of 
pins in a certain way, so that in falling they 
would give some indication as to the wave 
movements in the earth. He also made pen- 
dulums made of strings with weights tied at 
the end, and from his discoveries made with 
these elementary instruments, he planned 
earthquake-proof houses, and showed the en- 
gineers of Japan how to build bridges which 
would not fall down when they were shaken. 
So highly was his work regarded that the 
Japanese made him an earthquake professor 
at Tokio and supplied him with the means for 
making more extended experiments. And 
presently we find him producing artificial 
earthquakes by the score. He buried dyna- 
mite deep in the ground and exploded it by 
means of an electric button. The miniature 
earthquake thus produced was carefully meas- 
ured with curious instruments of Professor 
Milne's invention. At first one earthquake 
was enough at any one time, but as the experi- 
ments continued. Professor Milne sometimes 
had five or six earthquakes all quaking to- 



88 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

gether; and once so interested did he become 
that he forgot all about the destructive nature 
of earthquakes, and ventured too near. A 
ton or more of earth came crashing down 
around him, half burying him and smashing 
his instruments flat. All this made the Jap- 
anese rub their eyes with astonishment, and by 
and by the Emperor heard of it. Of course 
he was deeply interested in earthquakes, be- 
cause there was no telling when one might 
come along and shake down his palace over 
his head. So he sent for Professor Milne, 
and, after assuring himself that these experi- 
mental earthquakes really had no serious in- 
tentions, he commanded that one be produced 
on the spot. So Professor Milne laid out a 
number of toy towns and villages and hills in 
the palace yard with a tremendous toy earth- 
quake underneath. The Emperor and his 
gayly dressed followers stood well off to one 
side, and when Professor Milne gave the word 
the Emperor solemnly pressed a button, and 
watched with the greatest delight the curious 
way in which the toy cities were quaked to 
earth. And after that, this surprising Eng- 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 91 

lishman, who could make earthquakes as easily 
as a Japanese makes a lacquered basket, was 
held in high esteem in Japan, and for more 
than twenty years he studied earthquakes and 
invented machines for recording them. Then 
he returned to his home in England, where he 
is at work establishing earthquake stations in 
various parts of the world, by means of which 
he expects to reduce earthquake measurement 
to an exact science, an accomplishment which 
will have the greatest practical value to the 
commercial interests of the world, as I shall 
soon explain. 

But first for a glimpse at the curious earth- 
quake measurer itself. To begin with, there 
are two kinds of instruments — one to measure 
near-by disturbances, and the second to meas- 
ure waves which come from great distances. 
The former instrument was used by Professor 
Milne in Japan, where earthquakes are fre- 
quent; the latter is used in England. The 
technical name for the machine which meas- 
ures distant disturbances is the horizontal 
pendulum seismograph, and, like most won- 
derful inventions, it is exceedingly simple in 



92 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

principle, yet doing its work with marvellous 
delicacy and accuracy. 

In brief, the central feature of the seismo- 
graph is a very finely poised pendulum, which 
is jarred by the slightest disturbance of the 
earth, the end of it being so arranged that a 
photograph is taken of every quiver. Set a 
pendulum clock on the dining-table, jar the 
table, and the pendulum will swing, indicat- 
ing exactly with what force you have disturbed 
the table. In exactly the same way the deli- 
cate pendulum of the earthquake measurer 
indicates the shaking of the earth. 

The accompanying diagram gives a very 
clear idea of the arrangement of the appa- 
ratus. The "boom" is the pendulum. It is 
customary to think of a pendulum as hanging 
down like that of a clock, but this is a hori- 
zontal penduhim. Professor Milne has built 
a very soUd masonry column, reaching deep 
into the earth, and so firmly placed that noth- 
ing but a tremor of the hard earth itself will 
disturb it. Upon this is perched a firm metal 
stand, from the top of which the boom or 
pendulum, about thirty inches long, is swung 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 93 

by means of a "tie" or stay. The end of the 
boom rests against a fine, sharp pivot of steel 
(as shown in the Httle diagram to the right), 
so that it will swing back and forth without 
the least friction. The sensitive end of the 
pendulum, where all the quakings and quiver- 




Fig. 3. 



Diagram Showing Vertical and Horizontal Sections of the 
More Sensitive of Professor Milne's Two Pendulums, 
or Seismographs. 

ings are shown most distinctly, rests exactly 
over a narrow roll of photographic film, which 
is constantly turned by clockwork, and above 
this, on an outside stand, there is a little lamp 
which is kept burning night and day, year in 
and year out. The light from this lamp is 



94 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 





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reflected downward by 
means of a mirror 
through a little slit in 
the metal case which 
covers the entire appa- 
ratus. Of course this 
hght aff^ects the sensitive 
film, and takes a contin- 
uous photograph of the 
end of the boom. If 
the boom remains per- 
fectly still, the picture 
w ill be merely a straight 
line, as shown at the 
extreme right and left 
ends of the earthquake 
picture on this page. 
But if an earthquake 
wave comes along and 
sets the boom to quiv- 
ering, the picture be- 
comes at once blurred 
and full of little loops 
and indentations, slight 
at first, but becoming 
more violent as the 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 95 

greater waves arrive, and then gradually sub- 
siding. In the picture of the Borneo earth- 
quake of September 20, 1897, taken by Pro- 
fessor Milne in his English laboratory, it will 
be seen that the quakings were so severe at the 
height of the disturbance that nothing is left 
in the photograph but a blur. On the edge 
of the picture can be seen the markings of the 
hours, 7.30, 8.30, and 9.30. Usually this time 
is marked automatically on the film by means 
of the long hand of a watch which crosses the 
slit beneath the mirror (as shown in the lower 
diagram with figure 3). The Borneo earth- 
quake waves lasted in England, as will be 
seen, two hours fifty-six minutes and fifteen 
seconds, with about forty minutes of what are 
known as preliminary tremors. Professor 
Milne removes the film from his seismograph 
once a week — a strip about twenty-six feet 
long — develops it, and studies the photo- 
graphs for earthquake signs. 

Besides this very sensitive photographic 
seismograph Professor Milne has a simpler 
machine, not covered up and without lamp or 
mirror. In this instrument a fine silver needle 



96 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

at the end of the boom makes a steady mark 
on a band of smoked paper, which is kept 
turning under it by means of clockwork, A 
glance at this smoked-paper record will tell 
instantly at any time of day or night whether 
the earth is behaving itself. If the white line 
on the dark paper shows disturbances, Pro- 
fessor Milne at once examines his more sensi- 
tive photographic record for the details. 

It is difficult to realise how very sensitive 
these earthquake pendulums really are. They 
will indicate the very minutest changes in the 
earth's level — as slight as one inch in ten miles. 
A pair of these pendulums placed on two 
buildings at opposite sides of a city street 
would show that the buildings literally lean 
toward each other during the heavy traffic 
period of the day, dragged over from their 
level by the load of vehicles and people press- 
ing down upon the pavement between them. 
The earth is so elastic that a comparatively 
small impetus will set it vibrating. Why, 
even two hills tip together when there is a 
heavy load of moisture in a valley between 
them. And then when the moisture evapo- 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 97 

rates in a hot sun they tip away from each 
other. These pendulums show that. 

Nor are these the most extraordinary things 
which the pendulums will do. G. K. Gilbert, 
of the United States Geological Survey, ar- 
gues that the whole region of the great lakes 
is being slowly tipped to the southwest, so that 
some day Chicago will sink and the water out- 
let of the great fresh-water seas will be up 
the Chicago River toward the Mississippi, 
instead of down the St. Lawrence. Of course 
this movement is as slow as time itself — thou- 
sands of years must elapse before it is hardly 
appreciable; and yet Professor Milne's instru- 
ments will show the changing balance — a mar- 
vel that is almost beyond belief. Strangely 
enough, sensitive as this special instrument is 
to distant disturbances, it does not swerve nor 
quiver for near-by shocks. Thus, the blasting 
of powder, the heavy rumbling of wagons, 
the firing of artillery has little or no effect 
in producing a movement of the boom. The 
vibrations are too short; it requires the long, 
heavy swells of the earth to make a record. 

Professor Milne tells some odd stories of 



9S BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

his early experiences with the earthquake 
measurer. At one time his films showed evi- 
dences of the most horrible earthquakes, and 
he was afraid for the moment that all Japan 
had been shaken to pieces and possibly en- 
gulfed by the sea. But investigation showed 
that a little grey spider had been up to pranks 
in the box. The spider wasn't particularly 
interested in earthquakes, but he took the 
greatest pleasure in the swinging of the boom, 
and soon began to join in the game himself. 
He would catch the end of the boom with his 
feelers and tug it over to one side as far as 
ever he could. Then he would anchor himself 
there and hold on like grim death until the 
boom slipped away. Then he would run after 
it, and tug it over to the other side, and hold 
it there until his strength failed again. And 
so he would keep on for an hour or two until 
quite exhausted, enjoying the fun immensely, 
and never dreaming that he was manufactur- 
ing wonderful seismograms to upset the sci- 
entific world, since they seemed to indicate 
shocking earthquake disasters in all directions. 
Mr. Cleveland Moffett, to whom I am in- 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 99 

debted for much of the information contained 
in this chapter, tells how the reporters for the 
London papers rush off to see Professor 
Milne every time there is news of a great 
earthquake, and how he usually corrects their 
information. In June, 1896, for instance, the 
little observatory was fairly besieged with 
these searchers for news. 

"This earthquake happened on the 17th," 
said they, "and the whole eastern coast of 
Japan was overwhelmed with tidal waves, and 
30,000 lives were lost." 

"That last is probable," answered Professor 
Milne, "but the earthquake happened on the 
15th, not the 17th;" and then he gave them 
the exact hour and minute when the shocks 
began and ended. 

"But our cables put it on tjie 17th." 

"Your cables are mistaken." 

And, sure enough, later despatches came 
with information that the destructive earth- 
quake had occurred on the 15th, within half a 
minute of the time Professor Milne had speci- 
fied. There had been some error of transmis- 
sion in the earlier newspaper despatches. 

L.gFC. 



100 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Again, a few months later, the newspapers 
published cablegrams to the effect that there 
had been a severe earthquake at Kobe, with 
great injury to life and property. 

''That is not true," said Professor Milne. 
"There may have been a slight earthquake at 
Kobe, but nothing that need cause alarm." 

And the mail reports a few weeks later con- 
firmed his reassuring statement, and showed 
that the previous sensational despatches had 
been grossly exaggerated. 

Professor Milne is also the man to whose 
words cable companies lend anxious ear, for 
what he says often means thousands of dol- 
lars to them. Early in January, 1898, it was 
officially reported that two West Indian ca- 
bles had broken on December 31, 1897. 

"That is very unlikely," said Professor 
Milne; "but I have a seismogram showing 
that these cables may have broken at 11.30 
A.M. on December 29, 1897." And then he 
located the break at so many miles off the 
coast of Haiti. 

This sort of thing, which is constantly hap- 
pening, would look very much like magic if 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 103 

Professor Milne had kept his secrets to him- 
self; but he has given them freely to all the 
world. 

Professor Milne has learned from his ex- 
periments that the solid earth is full of move- 
ments, and tremors, and even tides, like the 
sea. We do not notice them, because they are 
so slow and because the crests of the waves 
are so far apart. Professor Milne likes to 
tell, fancifully, how the earth "breathes." He 
has found that nearly all earthquake waves, 
whether the disturbance is in Borneo or South 
America, reach his laboratory in sixteen min- 
utes, and he thinks that the waves come 
through the earth instead of around it. If 
they came around, he says, there would be two 
records — one from waves coming the short 
way and one from waves coming the long 
way round. But there is never more than a 
single record, so he concludes that the waves 
quiver straight through the solid earth itself, 
and he believes that this fact will lead to some 
important discoveries about the centre of our 
globe. Professor Milne was once asked how, 
if earthquake waves from every part of the 



104 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

earth reached his observatory in the same 
number of minutes, he could tell where the 
earthquake really was. 

''I may say, in a general way," he replied, 
"that we know them by their signatures, just 
as you know the handwriting of your friends; 
that is, an earthquake wave which has trav- 
elled 3,000 miles makes a different record in 
the instruments from one that has travelled 
5,000 miles; and that, again, a different rec- 
ord from one that has travelled 7,000 miles, 
and so on. Each one writes its name in its 
own way. It's a fine thing, isn't it, to have 
the earth's crust harnessed up so that it is 
forced to mark down for us on paper a dia- 
gram of its own movements?" 

He took pencil and paper again, and dashed 
off an earthquake wave like this: 




''There you have the signature of an earth- 
quake wave which has travelled only a short 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 105 

distance, say 2,000 miles; but here is the sig- 
nature of the very same wave after traveUing, 
say, 6,000 miles:" 

/I 




"You see the difference at a glance; the 
second seismogram (that is what we call these 
records) is very much more stretched out than 
the first, and a seismogram taken at 8,000 
miles from the start would be more stretched 
out still. This is because the waves of trans- 
mission grow longer and longer, and slower 
and slower, the farther they spread from the 
source of disturbance. In both figures the 
point A, where the straight line begins to 
waver, marks the beginning of the earth- 
quake; the rippling line AB shows the pre- 
liminary tremors which always precede the 
heavy shocks, marked C; and D shows the 
dying away of the earthquake in tremors simi- 
lar to AB. 

"Now, it is chiefly in the preliminary trem- 



106 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

ors that the various earthquakes reveal their 
identity. The more slowly the waves come, the 
longer it takes to record them, and the more 
stretched out they become in the seismograms. 
And by carefully noting these differences, 
especially those in time, we get our informa- 
tion. Suppose we have an earthquake in 
Japan. If you were there in person you 
would feel the preliminary tremors very fast, 
five or ten in a second, and their whole dura- 
tion before the heavy shocks would not exceed 
ten or twenty seconds. But these preliminary 
tremors, transmitted to England, would keep 
the pendulums swinging from thirty to thirty- 
two minutes before the heavy shocks, and each 
vibration would occupy five seconds. 

"There would be similar differences in the 
duration of the heavy vibrations; in Japan 
they would come at the rate of about one a 
second; here, at the rate of about one in 
twenty or forty seconds. It is the time, then, 
occupied by the preliminary tremors that tells 
us the distance of the earthquake. Earth- 
quakes in Borneo, for instance, give prelimi- 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 107 

nary tremors occupying about forty-one min- 
utes, in Japan about half an hour, in the 
earthquake region east of Newfoundland 
about eight minutes, in the disturbed region 
of the West Indies about nineteen or twenty 
minutes, and so on. Thus the earthquake is 
located with absolute precision." 

Most earthquakes occur in the deep bed of 
the ocean, in the vast valleys between ocean 
mountains, and the dangerous localities are 
now almost as well known as the principal 
mountain ranges of North America. There is 
one of these valleys, or ocean holes, off the 
west coast of South America from Ecuador 
down; there is one in the mid- Atlantic, about 
the equator, between twenty degrees and forty 
degrees west longitude; there is one at the 
Grecian end of the Mediterranean; one in the 
Bay of Bengal, and one bordering the Alps; 
there is the famous "Tuscarora Deep," from 
the Philippine Islands down to Java; and 
there is the North Atlantic region, about 300 
miles east of Newfoundland. In the ''Tusca- 
rora Deep" the slope increases 1,000 fathoms 



108 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

in twenty-five miles, until it reaches a depth 
of 4,000 fathoms. 

And this brings us to the consideration of 
one of the greatest practical advantages of the 
seismograph — in the exact location of cable 
breaks. Indeed, a large proportion of these 




Pieces of a Submarine Cable Picked Up in the Gulf of 
Mexico in 1888. 

The kinks are caused hy seismic disturbances^ and they show how 
much distortion a cable can suffer and still remain in yood elec- 
trical condition^ as this was found to be. 

breaks are the result of earthquakes. In a re- 
cent report Professor Milne says that there 
are now about twenty-seven breaks a year for 
10,000 miles of cable in active use. Most of 
these are very costly, fifteen breaks in the At- 
lantic cable between 1884 and 1894 having 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 109 

cost the companies $3,000,000, to say nothing 
of loss of time. And twice it has happened 
in Austraha (in 1880 and 1888) that the 
whole island has been thrown into excitement 
and alarm, the reserves being called out, and 
other measures taken, because the sudden 
breaking of cable connections with the outside 
world has led to the belief that military opera- 
tions against the country were preparing by 
some foreign power. A Milne pendulum at 
Sydney or Adelaide would have made it plain 
in a moment that the whole trouble was due to 
a submarine earthquake occurring at such a 
time and such a place. As it was, Australia 
had to wait in a fever of suspense (in one 
case there was a delay of nineteen days) until 
steamers arriving brought assurances that nei- 
ther Russia nor any other possibly unfriendly 
power had begun hostilities by tearing up the 
cables. 

There have been submarine earthquakes in 
the Tuscarora, like that of June 15, 1896, that 
have shaken the earth from pole to pole; and 
more than once different cables from Java 
have been broken simultaneously, as in 1890, 



no BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

when the three cables to Austraha snapped in 
a moment. And the great majority of breaks 
in the North Atlantic cables have occurred in 
the Newfoundland hollow, where there are 
two slopes, one dropping from 708 to 2,400 
fathoms in a distance of sixty miles, and the 
other from 275 to 1,946 fathoms within thirty 
miles. On October 4, 1884, three cables, lying 
about ten miles apart, broke simultaneously at 
the spot. The significance of such breaks is 
greater when the fact is borne in mind that 
cables frequently lie uninjured for many 
years on the great level plains of the ocean 
bed, where seismic disturbances are infrequent. 

The two chief causes of submarine earth- 
quakes are landslides, where enormous masses 
of earth plunge from a higher to a lower 
level, and in so doing crush down upon the 
cable, and "faults," that is, subsidences of 
great areas, which occur on land as well as at 
the bottom of the sea, and which in the latter 
case may drag down imbedded cables with 
them. 

It is in establishing the place and times of 
these breaks that Professor Milne's instru- 



THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 111 

ments have their greatest practical value; sci- 
entifically no one can yet calculate their value. 
In addition to the first instrument set up by 
Professor Milne in Tokio in 1883, which is 
still recording earthquakes, there are now in 



c^^K 


) • 


^^^^B 





Record Made on a Stationary Surface by the Vibrations 
of the Japanese Earthquake of July 19, 1891. 

Showing the complicated character of the motion {common to most 
earthquakes) , and also the course of a point at the centre of dis- 
turbance, 

operation about twenty other seismographs in 
various parts of the world, so that earthquake 
information is becoming very accurate and 
complete, and there is even an attempt being 



112 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

made to predict earthquakes just as the 
weather bureau predicts storms. In any event 
Professor Milne's invention must within a few 
years add greatly to our knowledge of the 
wonders of the planet on which we live. 



CHAPTER IV 

ELECTRICAL. FURNACES 

How the Hottest Heat is Produced — Making Diamonds 

No feats of discovery, not even the search for 
the North Pole or Stanley's expeditions in the 
heart of Africa, present more points of fas- 
cinating interest than the attempts now being 
made by scientists to explore the extreme 
limits of temperature. We live in a very nar- 
row zone in what may be called the great 
world of heat. The cut on the opposite page 
represents an imaginary thermometer show- 
ing a few of the important temperature points 
between the depths of the coldest cold and the 
heights of the hottest heat — a stretch of some 
10,461 degrees. We exist in a narrow space, 
as you will see, varying from 100° or a little 

more above the zero point to a possible 50° be- 
ns 



114 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

low; that is, we can withstand these narrow 
extremes of temperature. If some terrible 
world catastrophe should raise the tempera- 
ture of our summers or lower that of our 
winters by a very few degrees, human life 
would perish off the earth. 

But though we live in such narrow limits, 
science has found ways of exploring the great 
heights of heat above us and of reaching and 
measuring the depths of cold below us, with 
the result of making many important and in- 
teresting discoveries. 

I have written in the former ''Boys' Book of 
Inventions" of that wonderful product of sci- 
ence, liquid air — air submitted to such a degree 
of cold that it ceases to be a gas and becomes 
a liquid. This change occurs at a temperature 
312^ below zero. Professor John Dewar, of 
England, who has made some of the most in- 
teresting of discoveries in the region of great 
cold, not only reached a temperature low 
enough to produce liquid air, but he suc- 
ceeded in going on down until he could freeze 
this marvellous liquid into a solid — a sort of 
air ice. Not content even with this aston- 



.DEGREES 
10000 — 



7000— 



3500- 



212 — 

o- 

461 — 



DEGREES 

-Conjectural heat O — 
of the sun. 



40- 



-Highest heat yet 
obtained arti- 
ficially. 



202.- 



—Zero. 



—Mercury freezes. 



-Alcohol freezes. 



-Steel boils. 



300- 
,312 ■ 
320 - 



—Water boils. 
—Zero. 

-Prof. Dewar's ab- 
solute zero. 




440 — 



-Oxygen boils 
-Liquid air boils. 
-Nitrogen boils. 



-Hydrogen boils. 



461 I ^Prof . Dewar's ab 

■^solute zero. 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 117 

ishing degree of cold, Professor Dewar con- 
tinued his experiments until he could reduce 
hydrogen — that very light gas — to a hquid, 
at 440° below zero, and then, strange as it 
may seem, he also froze liquid hydrogen into a 
solid. From his experiments he finally con- 
cluded that the ''absolute zero" — that is, the 
place where there is no heat — was at a point 
461° below zero. And he has been able to 
produce a temperature, artificially, within a 
very few degrees of this utmost limit of cold. 
Think what this absolute zero means. 
Heat, we know, like electricity and light, is a 
vibratory or wave motion in the ether. The 
greater the heat, the faster the vibrations. 
We think of all the substances around us as 
solids, liquids, and gases, but these are only 
comparative terms. A change of temperature 
changes the solid into the liquid, or the gas 
into the solid. Take water, for instance. In 
the ordinary temperature of summer it is a 
liquid, in winter it is a hard crystalline sub- 
stance called ice; apply the heat of a stove 
and it becomes steam, a gas. So with all 
other substances. Air to us is an invisible 



118 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

gas, but if the earth should suddenly drop 
in temperature to 312° below zero all the 
air would fall in liquid drops like rain and 
fill the valleys of the earth with lakes and 
oceans. Still a little colder and these lakes 
and oceans would freeze into solids. Simi- 
larly, steel seems to us a very hard and solid 
substance, but apply enough heat and it boils 
like water, and finallv, if the heat be in- 
creased, it becomes a gas. 

Imagine, if you can, a condition in which 
all substances are solids; where the vibrations 
known as heat have been stilled to silence; 
where nothing lives or moves; where, indeed, 
there is an awful nothingness; and you can 
form an idea of the region of the coldest cold 
— in other words, the region where heat does 
not exist. Our frozen moon gives something 
of an idea of this condition, though probably, 
cold and barren as it is, the moon is still a 
good many degrees in temperature above the 
absolute zero. 

Some of the methods of exploring these 
depths of cold are treated in the chapter on 
liquid air already referred to. Our interest 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 119 

here centres in the other extreme of tempera- 
ture, where the heat vibrations are inconceiv- 
ably rapid ; where nearly all substances known 
to man become liquids and gases; where, in 
short, if the experimenter could go high 
enough, he could reach the awful degree of 
heat of the burning sun itself, estimated at 
over 10,000 degrees. It is in the work of ex- 
ploring these regions of great heat that such 
men as Moissan, Siemens, Faure, and others 
have made such remarkable discoveries, reach- 
ing temperatures as high as 7,000, or over 
twice the heat of boiling steel. Their accom- 
plishments seem the more wonderful when we 
consider that a temperature of this degree 
burns up or vaporises every known substance. 
How, then, could these men have made a fiu*- 
nace in which to produce this heat? Iron in 
such a heat would burn like paper, and so 
would brick and mortar. It seems inconceiv- 
able that even science should be able to pro- 
duce a degree of heat capable of consuming 
the tools and everything else with which it is 
produced. 

The heat vibrations at 7,000° are so intense 



120 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

that nickel and platinum, the most refractory, 
the most unmeltable of metals, burn like so 
much bee's-wax ; the best fire-brick used in lin- 
ing furnaces is consumed by it like lumps of 
rosin, leaving no trace behind. It works, in 
short, the most marvellous, the most incredible 
transformations in the substances of the earth. 

Indeed, we have to remember that the earth 
itself was created in a condition of great heat 
— first a swirling, burning gas, something like 
the sun of to-day, gradually cooling, contract- 
ing, rounding, until we have our beautiful 
world, with its perfect balance of gases, 
liquids, solids, its splendid life. A dying vol- 
cano here and there gives faint evidence of 
the heat which once prevailed over all the 
earth. 

It was in the time of great heat that the 
most beautiful and wonderful things in the 
world were wrought. It was fierce heat that 
made the diamond, the sapphire, and the ruby ; 
it fashioned all of the most beautiful forms 
of crystals and spars; and it ran the gold and 
silver of the earth in veins, and tossed up 
mountains, and made hollows for the seas. It 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 121 

is, in short, the temperature at which worlds 
were born. 

More wonderful, if possible, than the mir- 
acles wrought by such heat is the fact that 
men can now produce it artificially; and not 
only produce, but confine and direct it, and 
make it do their daily service. One asks him- 
self, indeed, if this can really be; and it was 
under the impulse of some such incredulity 
that I lately made a visit to Niagara Falls, 
where the hottest furnaces in the world are 
operated. Here clay is melted in vast quan- 
tities to form aluminium, a metal as precious 
a few years ago as gold. Here lime and car- 
bon, the most infusible of all the elements, are 
joined by intense heat in the curious new com- 
pound, calcium carbide, a bit of which dropped 
in water decomposes almost explosively, pro- 
ducing the new illuminating gas, acetylene. 
Here, also, pure phosphorus and the phos- 
phates are made in large quantities; and here 
is made carborundum — gem-crystals as hard 
as the diamond and as beautiful as the ruby.. 

An extensive plant has also been built to 
produce the heat necessary to make graphite 



122 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

such as is used in your lead-pencils, and for 
lubricants, stove-blacking, and so on. Graph- 
ite has been mined from the earth for thou- 
sands of years; it is pure carbon, first cousin 
to the diamond. Ten years ago the possibility 
of its manufacture would have been scouted 
as ridiculous; and yet in these wonderful fur- 
naces, which repeat so nearly the processes of 
creation, graphite is as easily made as soap. 
The marvel-workers at Niagara Falls have 
not yet been able to make diamonds — in quan- 
tities. The distinguished French chemist 
Moissan has produced them in his laboratory 
furnaces — small ones, it is true, but diamonds ; 
and one day they may be shipped in peck 
boxes from the great furnaces at Niagara 
Falls. This is no mere dream; the commer- 
cial manufacture of diamonds has already had 
the serious consideration of level-headed, far- 
seeing business men, and it may be accounted 
a distinct probability. What revolution the 
achievement of it would work in the diamond 
trade as now constituted and conducted no one 
can say. 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 123 

These marvellous new things in science and 
invention have been made possible by the 
chaining of Niagara to the wheels of industry. 
The power of the falling water is transformed 
into electricity. Electricity and heat are both 
vibratory motions of the ether; science has 
found that the vibrations known as electricity 
can be changed into the vibrations known as 
heat. Accordingly, a thousand horse-power 
from the mighty river is conveyed as electric- 
ity over a copper wire, changed into heat and 
light between the tips of carbon electrodes, 
and there works its wonders. In principle the 
electrical furnace is identical with the electric 
light. It is scarcely twenty years since the 
first electrical furnaces of real practical utility 
were constructed ; but if the electrical furnaces 
to-day in operation at Niagara Falls alone 
were combined into one, they would, as one 
scientist speculates, make a glow so bright 
that it could be seen distinctly from the moon 
— a hint for the astronomers who are seeking 
methods for communicating with the inhabi- 
tants of Mars. One furnace has been built in 



124 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

which an amount of heat energy equivalent to 
700 horse-power is produced in an arc cavity 
not larger than an ordinary water tumbler. 

On reaching Niagara Falls, I called on Mr. 
E. G. Acheson, whose name stands with that 
of Moissan as a pioneer in the investigation 
of high temperatures. Mr. Acheson is still a 
young man — not more than forty-five at most 
— and clean-cut, clear-eyed, and genial, with 
something of the studious air of a college pro- 
fessor. He is pre-eminently a self-made man. 
At twenty-four he found a place in Edison's 
laboratory — "Edison's college of inventions," 
he calls it — and, at twenty-five, he was one 
of the seven pioneers in electricity who (in 
1881-82) introduced the incandescent lamp in 
Europe. He installed the first electric-light 
plants in the cities of Milan, Genoa, Venice, 
and Amsterdam, and during this time w^as one 
of Edison's representatives in Paris. 

"I think the possibility of manufacturing 
genuine diamonds," he said to me, "has daz- 
zled more than one young experimenter. My 
first efforts in this direction were made in 
1880. It was before we had command of the 




Mr. E. G. Acheson^ One of the Pioneers in the Investi- 
gation of High Temperatures. 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 127 

tremendous electric energy now furnished by 
the modern dynamo, and when the highest 
heat attainable for practical purposes was ob- 
tained by the oxy-hydrogen flame. Even this 
was at the service of only a few experimenters, 
and certainly not at mine. My first experi- 
ments were made in what I might term the 
Vet way'; that is, by the process of chemical 
decomposition by means of an electric current. 
Very interesting results were obtained, which 
even now give promise of value; but the dia- 
mond did not materialise. 

"I did not take up the subject again until 
the dynamo had attained high perfection and 
I was able to procure currents of great power. 
Calling in the aid of the 6,500 degrees Fah- 
renheit or more of temperature produced by 
these electric currents, I once more set myself 
to the solution of the problem. I now had, 
however, two distinct objects in view: first, 
the making of a diamond; and, second, the 
production of a hard substance for abrasive 
purposes. My experiments in 1880 had re- 
sulted in producing a substance of extreme 
hardness, hard enough, indeed, to scratch the 



128 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

sapphire — the next hardest thing to the dia- 
mond — and I saw that such a material, cheap- 
ly made, would have great value. 

''My first experiment in this new series was 
of a kind that would have been denounced as 
absurd by any of the old-school book-chemists, 
and had I had a similar training, the proba- 
bility is that I should not have made such an 
investigation. But 'fools rush in where angels 
fear to tread,' and the experiment was made." 

This experiment by Mr. Acheson, extreme- 
ly simple in execution, was the first act in 
rolling the stone from the entrance to a veri- 
table Aladdin's cave, into which a multitude 
of experimenters have passed in their search 
for nature's secrets; for, while the use of 
the electrical furnace in the reduction of 
metals — in the breaking down of nature's 
compounds — was not new, its use for syn- 
thetic chemistry — for the putting together, 
the building up, the formation of compounds 
— was entirely new. It has enabled the chem- 
ist not only to reproduce the compounds of 
nature, but to go further and produce valu- 
able compounds that are wholly new and were 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 129 

heretofore unknown to man. Mr. Acheson 
conjectured that carbon, if made to combine 
with clay, would produce an extremely hard 
substance; and that, having been combined 
with the clay, if it should in the cooling sepa- 
rate again from the clay, it would issue out 
of the operation as diamond. He therefore 
mixed a little clay and coke dust together, 
placed them in a crucible, inserted the ends of 
two electric-light carbons into the mixture, 
and connected the carbons with a dynamo. 
The fierce heat generated at the points of the 
carbons fused the clay, and caused portions 
of the carbon to dissolve. After cooling, a 
careful examination was made of the mass, 
and a few small purple crystals were found. 
They sparkled with something of the bright- 
ness of diamonds, and were so hard that they 
scratched glass. Mr. Acheson decided at once 
that they could not be diamonds; but he 
thought they might be rubies or sapphires. A 
little later, though, when he had made similar 
crystals of a larger size, he found that they 
were harder than rubies, even scratching the 
diamond itself. He showed them to a number 



130 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

of expert jewellers, chemists, and geologists. 
They had so much the appearance of natural 
gems that many experts to whom they were 
submitted without explanation decided that 
they must certainly be of natural production. 
Even so eminent an authority as Geikie, the 
Scotch geologist, on being told, after he had 
examined them, that the crystals were manu- 
factured in America, responded testily: 
"These Americans! What won't they claim 
next? Why, man, those crystals have been in 
the earth a million years." 

Mr. Acheson decided at first that his crys- 
tals were a combination of carbon and alumin- 
ium, and gave them the name carborundum. 
He at once set to work to manufacture them 
in large quantities for use in making abrasive 
wheels, whetstones, and sandpaper, and for 
other purposes for which emery and corundum 
were formerly used. He soon found by chem- 
ical analysis, however, that carborundimi was 
not composed of carbon and aluminium, but of 
carbon and silica, or sand, and that he had, in 
fact, created a new substance ; so far as human 
knowledge now extends, no such combination 




The Furnace-Room, where Carborundum is Made. 
*^ A great, dimjif h'lrk haildiiuj, open at the sides like a shed.'' 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 133 

occurs anywhere in nature. And it was made 
possible only by the electrical furnace, with its 
power of producing heat of untold intensity. 

In order to get a clear understanding of the 
actual workings of the electrical furnace, I 
visited the plant where Mr. Acheson makes 
carborundum. The furnace-room is a great, 
dingy brick building, open at the sides like a 
shed. It is located only a few hundred yards 
from the banks of the Niagara River and well 
within the sound of the great falls. Just be- 
low it, and nearer the city, stands the hand- 
some building of the Power Company, in 
which the mightiest dynamos in the world 
whir ceaselessly, day and night, while the wa- 
ters of Niagara churn in the water-wheel pits 
below. Heavy copper wires carrying a cur- 
rent of 2,200 volts lead from the power-house 
to Mr. Acheson's furnaces, where the electrical 
energy is transformed into heat. 

There are ten furnaces in all, built loosely 
of fire-brick, and fitted at each end with elec- 
trical connections. And strange they look to 
one who is familiar with the ordinary fuel 
furnace, for they have no chimneys, no doors, 



134 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

no drafts, no ash-pits, no blinding glow of 
heat and light. The room in which they stand 
is comfortably cool. Each time a furnace is 
charged it is built up anew; for the heat pro- 
duced is so fierce that it frequently melts the 
bricks together, and new ones must be sup- 
plied. There were furnaces in many stages 
of development. One had been in full blast 
for nearly thirty hours, and a weird sight it 
was. The top gave one the instant impression 
of the seamy side of a volcano. The heaped 
coke was cracked in every direction, and from 
out of the crevices and depressions and from 
between the joints of the loosely built brick 
walls gushed flames of pale green and blue, 
rising upward, and burning now high, now 
low, but without noise beyond a certain low 
himiming. Within the furnace — which was 
oblong in shape, about the height of a man, 
and sixteen feet long by six wide — there was 
a channel, or core, of white-hot carbon in a 
nearly vaporised state. It represented graph- 
ically in its seething activity what the burning 
surface of the sun might be — and it was al- 
most as hot. Yet the heat was scarcely mani- 




Taking Off a Crust of the Furnace at Night. 

The light is so intense that you cannot look at it without hurting 

the eyes. 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 137 

fest a dozen feet from the furnace, and but 
for the blue flames rising from the cracks in 
the envelope, or wall, one might have laid his 
hand almost anywhere on the bricks without 
danger of burning it. 

In the best modern blast-furnaces, in which 
the coal is supplied with special artificial draft 
to make it burn the more fiercely, the heat may 
reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This is less 
than half of that produced in the electrical 
furnace. In porcelain kilns, the potters, after 
hours of firing, have been able to produce a 
cumulative temperature of as much as 3,300 
degrees Fahrenheit; and this, with the oxy- 
hydrogen flame (in which hydrogen gas is 
spurred to greater heat by an excess of oxy- 
gen), is the very extreme of heat obtainable 
by any artificial means except by the electrical 
furnace. Thus the electrical furnace has fully 
doubled the practical possibilities in the arti- 
ficial production of heat. 

Mr. Fitzgerald, the chemist of the Acheson 
Company, pointed out to me a curious glassy 
cavity in one of the half -dismantled furnaces. 
"Here the heat was only a fraction of that in 



138 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF IXVEXTIONS 

the core," he said. But still the fire-brick — 
and they were the most refractory produced in 
this country — had been melted down like but- 
ter. The floors under the furnace were all 
made of fire-brick, and yet the brick had run 
together until they were one sohd mass of 
glassy, stone. "We once tried putting a fire- 
brick in the centre of the core," said Mr. Fitz- 
gerald, "just to test the heat. Later, when 
w^e came to open the furnace, we couldn't find 
a vestige of it. The fire had totally consimied 
it, actually driving it all off* in vapour." 

Indeed, so hot is the core that there is really 
no accurate means of measuring its tempera- 
ture, although science has been enabled by 
various curious devices to form a fairly cor- 
rect estimate. The furnace has a provoking 
way of burning up all of the thermometers 
and heat-measuring devices which are applied 
to it. A number of years ago a clever Ger- 
man, named Segar, invented a series of little 
cones composed of various infusible earths like 
clay and feldspar. He so fashioned them that 
one in the series would melt at 1,620 degrees 
Fahrenheit, another at 1,800 degrees, and so 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 139 

on up. If the cones are placed in a pottery 
kiln, the potter can tell just what degree of 
temperature he has reached by the melting of 
the cones one after another. But in ^Ir. 
Acheson's electrical furnaces ail the cones 
would burn up and disappear in two minutes. 
The method employed for coming at the heat 
of the electrical furnace, in some measure, is 
this: a thin filament of platinum is heated red 
hot — 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit — by a certain 
current of electricity. A delicate thermom- 
eter is set three feet away, and the reading is 
taken. Then, by a stronger current, the fila- 
ment is made white hot — 3,400 degrees Fah- 
renheit — and the thermometer moved away 
until it reads the same as it read before. Two 
points in a distance-scale are thus obtained as 
a basis of calculation. The thermometer is 
then tried by an electrical furnace. To be 
kept at the same marking it must be placed 
much farther away than in either of the other 
instances. A simple computation of the com- 
parative distances with relation to the two 
well-ascertained temperatures gives approxi- 
mately, at least, the temperature of the elec- 



140 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

trical furnace. Some other methods are also 
employed. None is regarded as perfectly 
exact; but they are near enough to have 
yielded some very interesting and valuable 
statistics regarding the power of various tem- 
peratures. For instance, it has been found 
that aluminium becomes a limpid liquid at 
from 4,050 to 4,320 degrees Fahrenheit, and 
that lime melts at from 4,940 to 5,400 degrees, 
and magnesia at 4,680 degrees. 

There are two kinds of electrical furnaces, 
as there are two kinds of electric lights — arc 
and incandescent. Moissan has used the arc 
furnace in all of his experiments, but Mr. 
Acheson's furnaces follow rather the principle 
of the incandescent lamp. "The incandescent 
light," said Mr. Fitzgerald, "is produced by 
the resistance of a platinum wire or a carbon 
filament to the passage of a current of elec- 
tricity. Both light and heat are given off. In 
our furnace, the heat is produced by the re- 
sistance of a solid cylinder or core of pulver- 
ised coke to the passage of a strong current 
of electricity. When the core becomes white 
hot it causes the materials surrounding it to 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 141 

unite chemically, producing the carborundum 
crystals." 

The materials used are of the commonest — 
pure white sand, coke, sawdust, and salt. The 
sand and coke are mixed in the proportions of 
sixty to forty, the sawdust is added to keep 
the mixture loose and open, and the salt to 
assist the chemical combination of the ingre- 
dients. The furnace is half filled with this 
mixture, and then the core of coke, twenty-one 
inches in diameter, is carefully moulded in 
place. This core is sixteen feet long, reaching 
the length of the furnace, and connecting at 
each end with an immense carbon terminal, 
consisting of no fewer than twenty-five rods 
of carbon, each four inches square and nearly 
three feet long. These terminals carry the 
current into the core from huge insulated cop- 
per bars connected from above. When the 
core is complete, more of the carborundum 
mixture is shovelled in and tramped down 
until the furnace is heaping full. 

Everything is now ready for the electric 
current. The wires from the Niagara Falls 
power-plant come through an adjoining build- 



142 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

ing, where one is confronted, upon entering, 
with this suggestive sign: 

DANGER 

2,200 Volts. 

Tesla produces immensely higher voltages 
than this for laboratory experiments, but there 
are few more powerful currents in use in this 
country for practical purposes. Only about 
2,000 volts are required for executing crim- 
inals under the electric method employed in 
New York; 400 volts will run a trolley-car. 
It is hardly comfortable to know that a single 
touch of one of the wires or switches in this 
room means almost certain death. Mr. Fitz- 
gerald gave me a vivid demonstration of the 
terrific destructive force of the Niagara Falls 
current. He showed me how the circuit was 
broken. For ordinary currents, the breaking 
of a circuit simply means a twist of the wrist 
and the opening of a brass switch. Here, 
however, the current is carried into a huge 
iron tank full of salt water. The attendant, 
pulling on a rope, lifts an iron plate from the 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 145 

tank. The moment it leaves the water, there 
follow a rumbling crash like a thunder-clap, 
a blinding burst of flame, and thick clouds of 
steam and spray. The sight and sound of it 
make you feel delicate about interfering with 
a 2,200-volt current. 

This current is, indeed, too strong in volt- 
age for the furnaces, and it is cut down, by 
means of what were until recently the largest 
transformers in the world, to about 100 volts, 
or one-fourth the pressure used on the average 
trolley line. It is now, however, a current of 
great intensity — 7,500 amperes, as compared 
with the one-half ampere used in an incandes- 
cent lamp; and it requires eight square inches 
of copper and 400 square inches of carbon to 
carry it. 

Within the furnace, when the current is 
turned on, a thousand horse-power of energy 
is continuously transformed into heat. Think 
of it! Is it any wonder that the temperature 
goes up? And this is continued for thirty-six 
hours steadily, until 36,000 "horse-power 
hours" are used up and 7,000 pounds of the 
crystals have been formed. Remembering 



146 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

that 36,000 horse-power hours, when con- 
verted into heat, will raise 72,000 gallons of 
water to the boiling point, or will bring 350 
tons of iron up to a red heat, one can at least 
have a sort of idea of the heat evolved in a 
carborundum furnace. 

When the coke core glows white, chemical 
action begins in the mixture around it. The 
top of the furnace now slowly settles, and 
cracks in long, irregular fissures, sending out 
a pungent gas which, when lighted, burns 
lambent blue. This gas is carbon monoxide, 
and during the process nearly six tons of it 
are thrown off and wasted. It seems, indeed, 
a somewhat extravagant process, for fifty-six 
pounds of gas are produced for every forty of 
carborundum. 

''It is very distinctly a geological condi- 
tion," said Mr. Fitzgerald; ''crystals are not 
only formed exactly as they are in the earth, 
but we have our own little earthquakes and 
volcanoes." Not infrequently gas collects, 
forming a miniature mountain, with a crater 
at its summit, and blowing a magnificent foun- 
tain of flame, lava, and dense white vapour 




Blowing Off. 

' Not infrequently gas collects, formluif a miniature mountain, with 
a crater at its summit, and blowing a magnificent fountain of 
flame, lava, and dense white vapour high into the air, and roaV" 
ing all the while in a most terrifying maimer J"* 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 149 

high into the air, and roaring all the while in 
a most terrifying manner. The workmen call 
it "blowing off." 

At the end of thirty-six hours the current 
is cut off, and the furnace is allowed to cool, 
the workmen pulling down the brick as rap- 
idly as they dare. At the centre of the fur- 
nace, surrounding the core, there remains a 
solid mass of carborundum as large in diam- 
eter as a hogshead. Portions of this mass 
are sometimes found to be composed of pure, 
beautifully crystalline graphite. This in it- 
self is a surprising and significant product, 
and it has opened the way directly to graphite- 
making on a large scale. An important and 
interesting feature of the new graphite indus- 
try is the utilisation it has effected of a prod- 
uct from the coke regions of Pennsylvania 
which was formerly absolute waste. 

To return to carborundum: when the fur- 
nace has been cooled and the walls torn away, 
the core of carborundum is broken open, and 
the beautiful purple and blue crystals are laid 
bare, still hot. The sand and the coke have 
united in a compound nearly as hard as the 



150 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

diamond and even more indestructible, being 
less inflammable and wholly indissoluble in 
even the strongest acids. After being taken 
out, the crystals are crushed to powder and 
combined in various forms convenient for the 
various uses for which it is designed. 

I asked Mr. Acheson if he could make dia- 
monds in his furnaces. "Possibly," he an- 
swered, "with certain modifications." Dia- 
monds, as he explained, are formed by great 
heat and great pressure. The great heat is 
now easily obtained, but science has not yet 
learned nature's secret of great pressure. 
Moissan's method of making diamonds is to 
dissolve coke dust in molten iron, using a car- 
bon crucible into which the electrodes are in- 
serted. When the whole mass is fluid, the 
crucible and its contents are suddenly dashed 
into cold water or melted lead. This instan- 
taneous cooling of the iron produces enormous 
pressure, so that the carbon is crystallised in 
the form of diamond. 

But whatever it may or may not yet be able 
to do in the matter of diamond-making, there 
can be no doubt that the possibilities of the 



ELECTRICAL FURNACES 151 

electrical furnace are beyond all present con- 
jecture. With American inventors busy in its 
further development, and with electricity as 
cheap as the mighty power of Niagara can 
make it, there is no telling what new and 
wonderful products, now perhaps wholly un- 
thought-of by the human race, it may become 
possible to manufacture, and manufacture 
cheaply. 



CHAPTER V 

HARNESSING THE SUN 
The Solar Motor 

It seems daring and wonderful enough, the 
idea of setting the sun itself to the heavy work 
of men, producing the power which will help 
to turn the wheels of this age of machinery. 

At Los Angeles, CaL, I went out to see 
the sun at work pumping water. The solar 
motor, as it is called, was set up at one end of 
a great enclosure where ostriches are raised. 
I don't know which interested me more at 
first, the sight of these tall birds striding with 
dignity about their roomy pens or sitting on 
their big yellow eggs — just as we imagine 
them wild in the desert — or the huge, strange 
creation of man by which the sun is made to 
toil. I do not believe I could have guessed the 
purpose of this unique invention if I had not 

153 



154 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

known what to expect. I might have haz- 
arded the opinion that it was some new and 
monstrous searehUght: beyond that I think 
my imagination would have failed me. It 
resembled a huge inverted lamp-shade, or 
possibly a tremendous iron-ribbed colander, 
bottomless, set on its edge and supported by 
a steel framework. Near by there was a little 
wooden building which served as a shop or 
engine-house. A trough full of running wa- 
ter led away on one side, and from within 
came the steady chug-chug, chug-chug of ma- 
chinery, apparently a pump. So this was the 
sun-subduer! A little closer inspection, with 
an audience of ostriches, very sober, looking 
over the fence behind me and wondering, I 
suppose, if I had a cracker in my pocket, I 
made out some other very interesting particu- 
lars in regard to this strange invention. The 
colander-like device was in reality, I discov- 
ered, made up of hundreds and hundreds 
(nearly 1,800 in all) of small mirrors, the 
reflecting side turned inward, set in rows on 
the strong steel framework which composed 
the body of the great colander. By looking 



9- 




Side View of the Solar Motor 



HARNESSING THE SUN 157 

up through the hole in the bottom of the col- 
ander I was astonished by the sight of an 
object of such brightness that it dazzled my 
eyes. It looked, indeed, like a miniature sun, 
or at least like a huge arc light or a white-hot 
column of metal. And, indeed, it was white 
hot, glowing, burning hot — a slim cylinder of 
copper set in the exact centre of the colander. 
At the top there was a jet of white steam like 
a plume, for this was the boiler of this extraor- 
dinary engine. 

*'It is all very simple when you come to see 
it," the manager was saying to me. "Every 
boy has tried the experiment of flashing the 
sunshine into his chum's window with a mir- 
ror. Well, we simply utilise that principle. 
By means of these hundreds of mirrors we 
reflect the light and heat of the sun on a single 
point at the centre of what you have described 
as a colander. Here we have the cylinder of 
steel containing the water which we wish 
heated for steam. This cylinder is thirteen 
and one-half feet long and will hold one hun- 
dred gallons of water. If you could see it 
cold, instead of glowing with heat, you would 



158 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

find it jet black, for we cover it with a peculiar 
heat-absorbing substance made partly of lamp- 
black, for if we left it shiny it would re-reflect 
some of the heat which comes from the mir- 
rors. The cold water runs in at one end 
through this flexible metallic hose, and the 
steam goes out at the other through a similar 
hose to the engine in the house." 

Though this colander, or ''reflector," as it 
is called, is thirty-three and one-half feet in 
diameter at the outer edge and weighs over 
four tons, it is yet balanced perfectly on its 
tall standards. It is, indeed, mounted very 
much like a telescope, in meridian, and a com- 
mon little clock in the engine-room operates 
it so that it always faces the sun, like a sun- 
flower, looking east in the morning and west 
in the evening, gathering up the burning rays 
of the sun and throwing them upon the boiler 
at the centre. In the engine-house I found a 
pump at work, chug-chugging like any pump 
run by steam-power, and the water raised b)^ 
sun-power flowing merrily away. The man- 
ager told me that he could easily get ten 
horse-power; that, if the sun was shining 




Front View of the Los Angeles Solar Motor 



HARNESSING THE SUN l6l 

brightly, he could heat cold water in an hour 
to produce 150 pounds of steam. 

The wind sometimes blows a gale in South- 
ern California, and I asked the manager what 
provision had been made for keeping this 
huge reflector from blowing away. 

"Provision is made for varying wind-pres- 
sures," he said, ''so that the machine is always 
locked in any position, and may only be moved 
by the operating mechanism, unless, indeed, 
the whole structure should be carried away. 
It is designed to withstand a wind-pressure of 
100 miles an hour. It went through the high 
gales of the November storm without a par- 
ticle of damage. One of the peculiar charac- 
teristics of its construction is that it avoids 
wind-pressure as much as possible." 

The operation of the motor is so simple 
that it requires very little human labour. 
When power is desired, the reflector must be 
swung into focus — that is, pointed exactly 
toward the sun — which is done by turning a 
crank. This is not beyond the power of a 
good-sized boy. There is an indicator which 
readily shows when a true focus is obtained. 



162 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

This done, the reflector follows the sun closely 
all day. In about an hour the engine can be 
started by a turn of the throttle-valve. As 
the engine is automatic and self -oiling, it runs 
without further attention. The supply of 
water to the boiler is also automatic, and is 
maintained at a constant height without any 
danger of either too much or too little water. 
Steam-pressure is controlled by means of a 
safety-valve, so that it may never reach a dan- 
gerous point. The steam passes from the 
engine to the condenser and thence to the 
boiler, and the process is repeated indefinitely. 
Having now the solar motor, let us see what 
it is good for, what is expected of it. Of 
course when the sun does not shine the motor 
does not work, so that its usefulness would be 
much curtailed in a very cloudy country like 
England, for instance; but here in Southern 
California and in all the desert region of the 
United States and Mexico, to say nothing of 
the Sahara in Africa, where the sun shines 
almost continuously, the solar motor has its 
greatest sphere of usefulness, and, indeed, its 
greatest need ; for these lands of long sunshine, 




The brilliant steam boiler glistens in the centre 



HARNESSING THE SUN 165 

the deserts, are also the lands of parched f ruit- 
lessness, of little water, so that the invention 
of a motor which will utiHse the abundant 
sunshine for pumping the much-needed water 
has a peculiar value here. 

The solar motor is expected to operate at 
all seasons of the year, regardless of all cli- 
matic conditions, with the single exception of 
cloudy skies. Cold makes no difference what- 
ever. The best results from the first model 
used in experimental work at Denver were 
obtained at a time when the pond from which 
the water was pumped was covered with a 
thick coating of ice. But, of course, the length 
of the solar day is longer in the summer, giv- 
ing more heat and more power. The motor 
may be depended upon for work from about 
one hour and a half after sunrise to within 
half an hour of sunset. In the summer time 
this would mean about twelve hours' constant 
pumping. 

Think what such an invention means, if 
practically successful, to the vast stretches of 
our arid Western land, valueless without water. 
Spread all over this country of Arizona, New 



166 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Mexico, Southern California, and other States 
are thousands of miles of canals to bring in 
water from the rivers for irrigating the des- 
erts, and there are untold numbers of wind- 
mills, steam and gasoline pumps which accom- 
plish the same purpose more laboriously. 
Think what a new source of cheap power will 
do — making valuable hundreds of acres of 
desert land, providing homes for thousands of 
busy Americans. Indeed, a practical solar 
motor might make habitable even the Sahara 
Desert. And it can be used in many other 
ways besides for pumping water. Threshing 
machines might be run by this power, and, 
converted into electricity and saved up in 
storage batteries, it might be used for lighting 
houses, even for cooking dinners, or in fact 
for any purpose requiring power. 

These solar motors can be built at no great 
expense. I was told that ten-horse-power 
plants would cost about $200 per horse-power, 
and one-hundred-horse-power plants about 
$100 per horse-power. This would include the 
entire plant, with engine and pump complete. 




!> 






g 



HARNESSING THE SUN l69 

When it is considered that the annual rental 
of electric power is frequently $50 per horse- 
power, whether it is used or not, it will be seen 
that the solar motor means a great deal, espe- 
cially in connection with irrigation enterprises. 
And the time is coming — long-headed in- 
ventors saw it many years ago — when some 
device for the direct utilisation of the sun's 
heat will be a necessity. The world is now 
using its coal at a very rapid rate; its wood, 
for fuel purposes, has already nearly disap- 
peared, so that, within a century or two, new 
ways of furnishing heat and power must be 
devised or the human race will perish of cold 
and hunger. Fortunately there are other 
sources of power at hand; the waterfalls, the 
Niagaras, which, converted into electricity, 
may yet heat our sitting-rooms and cook our 
dinners. There is also wind-power, now used 
to a limited extent by means of wind-mills. 
But greater than either of these sources is the 
unlimited potentiality of the tides of the sea, 
which men have sought in vain to harness, and 
the direct heat of the sun itself. Some time 
in the future these will be subdued to the pur- 



170 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

pose of men, perhaps our main dependence for 
heat and power. 

When we come to think of it, the harnessing 
of the sun is not so very strange. In fact, we 
have had the sun harnessed since the dawn of 
man on the earth, only indirectly. Without 
the sun there would be nothing here— no men, 
no life. Coal is nothing but stored-up, bottled 
sunshine. The sunlight of a million years ago 
produced forests, which, falling, were buried 
in the earth and changed into coal. So when 
we put coal in the cook-stove we may truthfully 
say that we are boiling the kettle with million- 
year-old sunshine. Similarly there would be 
no waterfalls for us to chain and convert into 
electricity, as we have chained Niagara, if the 
sun did not evaporate the waters of the sea, 
take it up in clouds, and afterward empty the 
clouds in rain on the mountain-tops from 
whence the water tumbles down again to the 
sea. So no wind would blow without the sun 
to work changes in the air. 

In short, therefore, we have been using the 
sunlight all these years, hardly knowing it, 
but not directly. And think of the tremen- 



HARNESSING THE SUN 171 

dous amount of heat which comes to the earth 
from the sun. Every boy has tried using a 
burning-glass, which, focusing a few inches 
of the sun's rays, will set fire to paper or cloth. 

Professor Langley says that "the heat 
which the sun, when near the zenith, radiates 
upon the deck of a steamship would suffice, 
could it be turned into work without loss, to 
drive her at a fair rate of speed." 

The knowledge of this enormous power 
going to waste daily and hourly has inspired 
many inventors to work on the problem of the 
solar motor. Among the greatest of these was 
the famous Swedish engineer, John Ericsson, 
who invented the iron-clad Monitor. He con- 
structed a really workable solar motor, dif- 
ferent in construction but similar in principle 
to the one in California which I have described. 
In 1876 Ericsson said: 

"Upon one square mile, using only one-half 
of the surface and devoting the rest to build- 
ings, roads, etc., we can drive 64,800 steam- 
engines, each of 100 horse-power, simply by 
the heat radiating from the sun. Archimedes, 
having completed his calculation of the force 



172 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

of a lever, said that he could move the earth. 
I affirm that the concentration of the heat 
radiated by the sun would produce a force 
capable of stopping the earth in its course." 
A firm believer in the truth of his theories, 
he devoted the last fifteen years of his life and 
$100,000 to experimental work on his solar 
engine. For various reasons Ericsson's inven- 
tion was not a practical success; but now that 
modern inventors, with their advancing knowl- 
edge of mechanics, have turned their attention 
to the problem, and now that the need of the 
solar motor is greater than ever before, espe- 
cially in the world's deserts, we may look to 
see a practical and successful machine. Per- 
haps the California motor may prove the so- 
lution of the problem; perhaps it will need 
improvements, which use and experience will 
indicate; perhaps it may be left for a reader 
of these words to discover the great secret and 
make his fortune. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 

Fixing of Nitrogen — Experiments of Professor Nohhc 

No lad of to-day, ambitious to become a sci- 
entist or inventor, reading of all the wonder- 
ful and revolutionising discoveries and inven- 
tions of recent years, need fear for plenty of 
new problems to solve in the future. No, the 
great problems have not all been solved. We 
have the steam-engine, the electric motor, the 
telegraph, the telephone, the air-ship, but not 
one of them is perfect, not one that does not 
bring to the attention of inventors scores of 
entirely new problems for solution. The fur- 
ther we advance in science and mechanics the 
further we see into the marvels of our wonder- 
ful earth and of our life, and the more there 
is for us to do. 

173 



174 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

As population increases and people become 
more intelligent there is a constant demand 
for new things, new machinery which will en- 
able the human race to move more rapidly 
and crowd more work and more pleasure into 
our short human life. One man working to- 
day with machinery can accomplish as much 
as many men of a hundred years ago; he can 
live in a house that would then have been a 
palace; enjoy advantages of education, amuse- 
ment, luxury, that would then have been pos- 
sible only to kings and princes. 

And the very greatest of all the problems 
which the inventors and scientists of coming 
generations must solve is the question— seem- 
ingly commonplace — of food. 

We who live in this age of plenty can 
hardly realise that food could ever be a prob- 
lem. But far-sighted scientists have already 
begun to look forward to the time when there 
will be so many people on the earth that the 
farms and fields will not supply food for 
every one. It is a well-known fact that the 
population of the world is increasing enor- 
mously. Think how America has been ex- 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 175 

panding; a whole continent overrun and set- 
tled almost within a century and a half! 
Nearly all the land that can be successfully 
farmed has already been taken up, and the 
land in some of the older settled localities, like 
Virginia and the New England States, has 
been so steadily cropped that it is failing in 
fertility, so that it will not raise as much as it 
would years ago. In Europe no crop at all 
can be raised without quantities of fertiliser. 

While there was yet new country to open 
up, while America and Australia were yet 
virgin soil, there was no immediate cause for 
alarm; but, as no less an authority than Sir 
William Crookes pointed out a few years ago 
in a lecture before the British Association, the 
new land has now for the most part been 
opened and tamed to the plough or utilised for 
grazing purposes. And already we are hear- 
ing of worn-out land in Dakota — the paradise 
of the wheat producer. The problem, there- 
fore, is simple enough: the world is reaching 
the limits of its capacity for food production, 
while the population continues to increase 
enormously: how soon will starvation begin? 



176 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Sir William Crookes has prophesied, I believe, 
that the acute stage of the problem will be 
reached within the next fifty years, a time 
when the call of the world for food cannot be 
supplied. If it were not for our coming in- 
ventors and scientists it would certainly be a 
gloomy outlook for the human race. 

But science has already foreseen this prob- 
lem. When Sir William Crookes gave his 
address he based his arguments on modern 
agricultural methods ; he did not look forward 
into the future, he did not show any faith in 
the scientists and inventors who are to come, 
who are now boys, perhaps. He did not even 
take cognisance of the work that had already 
been done. For inventors and scientists are 
already grappling with this problem of food. 

In a nutshell, the question of food produc- 
tion is a question of nitrogen. 

This must be explained. A crop of wheat, 
for instance, takes from the soil certain ele- 
ments to help make up the wheat berry, the 
straw, the roots. And the most important of 
all the elements it takes is nitrogen. When 
we eat bread we take this nitrogen that the 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 177 

wheat has gathered from the soil into our own 
bodies to build up our bones, muscles, brains. 
Each wheat crop takes more nitrogen from 
the soil, and finally, if this nitrogen is not 
given back to the earth in some way, wheat 
will no longer grow in the fields. In other 
words, we say the farm is "worn out," 
"cropped to death." The soil is there, but the 
precious life-giving nitrogen is gone. And so 
it becomes necessary every year to put back 
the nitrogen and the other elements which the 
crop takes from the soil. This purpose is ac- 
complished by the use of fertilisers. Manure, 
ground bone, nitrates, guano, are put in fields 
to restore the nitrogen and other plant foods. 
In short, we are compelled to feed the soil that 
the soil may feed the wheat, that the wheat 
may feed us. You will see that it is a complete 
circle — like all life. 

Now, the trouble, the great problem, lies 
right here : in the difficulty of obtaining a suf- 
ficient amount of fertiliser — in other words, in 
getting food enough to keep the soil from 
nitrogen starvation. Already we ship guano 
— the droppings of sea-birds — from South 



178 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

America and the far islands of the sea to put 
on our lands, and we mine nitrates (which con- 
tain nitrogen) at large expense and in great 
quantities for the same purpose. And while 
we go to such lengths to get nitrogen we are 
wasting it every year in enormous quantities. 
Gunpowder and explosives are most made up 
of nitrogen — saltpetre and nitro-glycerin — so 
that every war wastes vast quantities of this 
precious substance. Every discharge of a 13- 
inch gun liberates enough nitrogen to raise 
many bushels of wheat. Thus we see another 
reason for the disarmament of the nations. 

A prediction has been made that barely 
thirty years hence the wheat required to feed 
the world will be 3,260,000,000 bushels annu- 
ally, and that to raise this about 12,000,000 
tons of nitrate of soda yearly for the area 
under cultivation will be needed over and 
above the 1,250,000 tons now used by man- 
kind. But the nitrates now in sight and avail- 
able are estimated good for only another fifty 
years, even at the present low rate of con- 
sumption. Hence, even if famine does not 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 179 

immediately impend, the food problem is far 
more serious than is generally supposed. 

Now nitrogen, it will be seen, is one of the 
most precious and necessary of all substai;ices 
to human life, and it is one of the most com- 
mon. If the world ever starves for the lack 
of nitrogen it will starve in a very world of 
nitrogen. For there is not one of the elements 
more common than nitrogen, not one present 
around us in larger quantities. Four-fifths of 
every breath of air we breathe is pure nitrogen 
— four-fifths of all the earth's atmosphere is 
nitrogen. 

But, unfortunately, most plants are unable 
to take up nitrogen in its gaseous form as it 
appears in the air. It must be combined with 
hydrogen in the form of ammonia or in some 
nitrate. Ammonia and the nitrates are, there- 
fore, the basis of all fertilisers. 

Now, the problem for the scientist and in- 
ventor takes this form: Here is the vast store- 
house of life-giving nitrogen in the air; how 
can it be caught, fixed, reduced to the purpose 
of men, spread on the hungry wheat-fields? 



180 BOYS' SECOND BOOlC OF INVENTIONS 

The problem, therefore, is that of ''fixing" the 
nitrogen, taking the gas out of the air and 
reducing it to a form in which it can be han- 
dled and used. 

Two principal methods for doing this have 
already been devised, both of which are of 
fascinating interest. One of these ways, that 
of a clever American inventor, is purely a 
machinery process, the utilisation of power by 
means of which the nitrogen is literally sucked 
out of the air and combined with soda so that it 
produces nitrate of soda, a high-class fertiliser. 
The water power of Niagara Falls is used to 
do this work — it seems odd enough that Niag- 
ara should be used for food production! 

The other method, that of a hard-working 
German professor, is the cunning utilisation 
of one of nature's marvellous processes of 
taking the nitrogen from the air and deposit- 
ing it in the soil — for nature has its own beau- 
tiful way of doing it. I will describe the sec- 
ond method first because it will help to clear 
up the whole subject and lead up to the work 
of the American inventor and his extraordi- 
nary machinery. 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 181 

Nearly every farmer, without knowing it, 
employs nature's method of fixing nitrogen 
every year. It is a simple process which he 
has learned from experience. He knows that 
when land is worn out by overcropping with 
wheat or other products which draw heavily 
on the earth's nitrogen supply certain crops 
will still grow luxuriantly upon the worn-out 
land, and that if these crops are left and 
ploughed in, the fertility of the soil will be 
restored, and it will again produce large 
yields of wheat and other nitrogen-demand- 
ing plants. These restorative crops are clover, 
lupin, and other leguminous plants, including 
beans and peas. Every one who is at all fa- 
miliar with farming operations has heard of 
seeding down an old field to clover and then 
ploughing in the crop, usually in the second 
year. 

The great importance of this bit of the wis- 
dom of experience was not appreciated by 
science for many years. Then several Ger- 
man experimenters began to ask why clover 
and lupin and beans should flourish on worn- 
out land when other crops failed. All of these 



IS^ BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

plants are especially rich in nitrogen, and yet 
they grew well on soil which had been robbed 
of its nitrogen. Why was this so? 

It was a hard problem to solve, but science 
was undaunted. Botanists had already dis- 
covered that the roots of the leguminous 
plants — ^that is, clover, lupin, beans, peas, and 
so on — were usually covered with small round 
swellings, or tumors, to which were given the 
name nodules. The exact purpose of these 
swellings being unknown, they were set down 
as a condition, possibly, of disease, and no 
further attention was paid to them until Pro- 
fessor Hellriegel, of Burnburg, in Anlialt, 
Germany, took up the work. After much ex- 
perimenting, he made the important discovery 
that lupins which had nodules would grow in 
soil devoid of nitrogen, and that lupins which 
had no nodules would not grow in the same 
soil. It was plain, therefore, that the nodules 
must play an important, though mysterious, 
part in enabling the plant to utilise the free 
nitrogen of the air. That was early in the 
'80s. His discovery at once started other in- 
vestigators to work, and it was not long before 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 18S 

the announcement came — and it came, curious- 
ly enough, at a time when Dr. Koch was mak- 
ing his greatest contributions to the world's 
knowledge of the germ theory of disease — 
that these nodules were the result of minute 
bacteria found in the soil. Professor Bey- 
erinck, of Miinster, gave the bacteria the name 
Radiocola. 

It was at this time that Professor Nobbe 
took up the work with vigour. If these nod- 
ules were produced by bacteria, he argued that 
the bacteria must be present in the soil; and 
if they were not present, would it not be pos- 
sible to supply them by artificial means? In 
other words, if soil, say worn-out farm-soil or, 
indeed, pure sand like that of the sea-shore 
could thus be inoculated, as a physician in- 
oculates a guinea-pig with diphtheria germs, 
would not beans and peas planted there form 
nodules and draw their nourishment from the 
air? It was a somewhat startling idea, but all 
radically new ideas are startling; and, after 
thinking it over. Professor Nobbe began, in 
1888, a series of most remarkable experiments, 
having as their purpose the discovery of a prac- 



184 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

tical method of soil inoculation. He gathered 
the nodule-covered roots of beans and peas, 
dried and crushed them, and made an extract 
of them in water. Then he prepared a gelatine 
solution with a little sugar, asparagine, and 
other materials, and added the nodule-extract. 
In this medium colonies of bacteria at once 
began to grow — bacteria of many kinds. 
Professor Nobbe separated the Radiocola — 
which are oblong in shape — and made what is 
known as a "clear culture," that is, a culture 
in gelatine, consisting of billions of these par- 
ticular germs, and no others. When he had 
succeeded in producing these clear cultures he 
was ready for his actual experiments in grow- 
ing plants. He took a quantity of pure sand, 
and, in order to be sure that it contained no 
nitrogen or bacteria in any form, he heated 
it at a high temperature three different times 
for six hours, thereby completely sterilising it. 
This sand he placed in three jars. To each of 
these he added a small quantity of mineral 
food — the required phosphorus, potassium, 
iron, sulphur, and so on. To the first he sup- 
plied no nitrogen at all in any form; the sec- 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 185 

ond he fertilised with saltpetre, which is large- 
ly composed of nitrogen in a form in which 
plants may readily absorb it through their 
roots; the third of the jars he inoculated with 
some of his bacteria culture. Then he planted 
beans in all three jars, and awaited the results, 
as may be imagined, somewhat anxiously. 
Perfectly pure sterilised water was supplied 
to each jar in equal amounts and the seeds 
sprouted, and for a week the young shoots in 
the three jars were almost identical in appear- 
ance. But soon after that there was a gradual 
but striking change. The beans in the first jar, 
having no nitrogen and no inoculation, turned 
pale and refused to grow, finally dying down 
completely, starved for want of nitrogenous 
food, exactly as a man would starve for the 
lack of the same kind of nourishment. The 
beans in the second jar, with the fertilised soil, 
grew about as they would in the garden, all 
of the nourishment having been artificially 
supplied. But the third jar, which had been 
jealously watched, showed really a miracle of 
growth. It must be remembered that the soil 
in this jar was as absolutely free of nitrogen 



186 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

as the soil in the first jar, and yet the beans 
flourished greatly, and when some of the plants 
were analysed they were found to be rich in 
nitrogen. Nodules had formed on the roots 
of the beans in the third or inoculated jar only, 
thereby proving beyond the hope of the ex- 
perimenter that soil inoculation was a possi- 
bility, at least in the laboratory. 

With this favourable beginning Professor 
Nobbe went forward with his experiments 
with renewed vigour. He tried inoculating 
the soil for peas, clover, lupin, vetch, acacia, 
robinia, and so on, and in every case the roots 
formed nodules, and although there was abso- 
lutely no nitrogen in the soil, the plants in- 
variably flourished. Then Professor Nobbe 
tried great numbers of difficult test experi- 
ments, such as inoculating the soil with clover 
bacteria and then planting it with beans or 
peas, or vice versa, to see whether the bac- 
teria from the nodules of any one leguminous 
plant could be used for all or any of the others. 
He also tried successive cultures; that is, bean 
bacteria for beans for several years, to see if 
better results could be obtained by continued 




Trees Growing in Water at Professor Nobbe's Laboratory. 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 189 

use. Even an outline description of all the 
experiments which Professor Nobbe made in 
the course of these investigations would fill a 
small volume, and it will be best to set down 
here only his general conclusions. 

* These wonderful nitrogen-absorbing bac- 
teria do not appear in all soil, although they 
are very widely distributed. So far as known 
they form nodules only on the roots of a few 
species of plants. In their original form in 
the soil they are neutral — that is, not especially 
adapted to beans, or peas, or any one particu- 
lar kind of crop. But if clover, for instance, 
is planted, they straightway form nodules and 
become especially adapted to the clover plant, 
so that, as every farmer knows, the second crop 
of clover on worn-out land is much better than 
the first. And, curiously enough, when once 
the bacteria have become thoroughly adapted 
to one of the crops, say beans, they will not 
affect peas or clover, or only feebly. 

Another strange feature of the life of these 
little creatures, which has a marvellous sug- 
gestion of intelligence, is their activities in 
various kinds of soil. When the ground is 



190 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

very rich — that is, when it contains plenty of 
nitrogenous matter — they are what Professor 
Nobbe calls ''lazy." They do not readily form 
nodules on the roots of the plants, seeming 
almost to know that there is no necessity for it. 
But when once the nitrogenous matter in the 
soil begins to fail, then they work more sharp- 
ly, and when it has gone altogether they are 
at the very height of activity. Consequently, 
unless the soil is really worn out, or very poor 
to begin with, there is no use in inoculating it 
— it would be like ''taking owls to Athens," as 
Professor Nobbe says. 

Having thus proved the remarkable effi- 
cacy of soil inoculation in his laboratory and 
greenhouses, where I saw great numbers of 
experiments still going forward. Professor 
Nobbe set himself to make his discoveries of 
practical value. He gave to his bacteria cul- 
tures the name "Nitragen" — spelled with an 
"a" — and he produced separate cultures for 
each of the important crops — peas, beans, 
vetch, lupin, and clover. In 1894 the first of 
these were placed on the market, and they have 
had a steadily increasing sale, although such 




Experimenting with Nitrogen in Professor Nobbe's 
Laboratory. 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 193 

a radical innovation as this, so far out of the 
ordinary run of agricultural operation, and so 
almost unbelievably wonderful, cannot be ex- 
pected to spread very rapidly. The cultures 
are now manufactured at one of the great 
commercial chemical laboratories on the river 
Main. I saw some of them in Professor 
Nobbe's laboratory. They come in small glass 
bottles, each marked with the name of the crop 
for which it is especially adapted. The bottle 
is partly filled with the yellow gelatinous sub- 
stance in which the bacteria grow. On the 
surface of this there is a mossy-like growth, 
resembling mould. This consists of innumer- 
able millions of the little oblong bacteria. A 
bottle costs about fifty cents and contains 
enough bacteria for inoculating half an acre 
of land. It must be used within a certain num- 
ber of weeks after it is obtained, while it is 
still fresh. The method of applying it is very 
simple. The contents of the bottle are diluted 
with warm water. Then the seeds of the 
beans, clover, or peas, which have previously 
been mixed with a little soil, are treated with 
this solution and thoroughly mixed with the 



194 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

soil. After that the mass is partially dried 
so that the seeds may be readily sown. The 
bacteria at once begin to propagate in the soil, 
which is their natural home, and by the time 
the beans or peas have put out roots they are 
present in vast numbers and ready to begin 
the active work of forming nodules. It is not 
known exactly how the bacteria absorb the 
free nitrogen from the air, but they do it suc- 
cessfully, and that is the main thing. Many 
German farmers have tried Nitragen. One, 
who was sceptical of its virtues, wrote to Pro- 
fessor Nobbe that he sowed the bacteria-inoc- 
ulated seeds in the form of a huge letter N in 
the midst of his field, planting the rest in the 
ordinary way. Before a month had passed 
that N showed up green and big over all the 
field, the plants composing it being so much 
larger and healthier than those around it. 

The United States Government has recently 
been experimenting along the same lines and 
has produced a new form of dry preparation 
of the bacteria in some cakes somewhat re- 
sembling a yeast-cake. 

The possibilities of such a discovery as this 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 195 

seem almost limitless. Science predicts the 
exhaustion of nitrogen and consequent failure 
of the food supply, and science promptly finds 
a way of making plants draw nitrogen from 
the boundless supplies of the air. The time 
may come when every farmer will send for 
his bottles or cakes of bacteria culture every 
spring as regularly as he sends for his seed, 
and when the work of inoculating the soil will 
be a familiar agricultural process, with discus- 
sions in the farmers' papers as to whether two 
bottles or one is best for a field of sandy loam 
with a southern exposure. Stranger things 
have happened. But it must be remembered, 
also, that the work is in its infancy as yet, and 
that there are vast unexplored fields and in- 
numerable possibilities yet to fathom. 

Wonderful as this discovery is, and much 
as it promises in the future, its efficacy, as soon 
as it becomes generally known, is certain to 
be overestimated, as all new discoveries are. 
Professor Nobbe himself says that it has its 
own limited serviceability. It will produce a 
bounteous crop of beans in the pure sand of 
the sea-shore if (and this is an important if) 



196 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

that sand also contains enough of the mineral 
substances — phosphorus, potassium, and so 
on — and if it is kept properly watered. A 
man with a worn-out farm cannot go ahead 
blindly and inoculate his soil and expect cer- 
tain results. He must know the exact disease 
from which his land is suffering before he 
applies the remedy. If it is deficient in the 
phosphates, bacteria cultures will not help it, 
whereas if it^is deficient in nitrogen, bacteria 
are just what it needs. And so agricultural 
education must go hand in hand with the in- 
troduction of these future preservers of the 
human race. It is safe to say that by the time 
there is a serious failure of the earth's soil for 
lack of nitrogen, science, with this wonderful 
beginning, will have ready a new system of 
cultivation, which will gradually, easily, and 
perfectly take the place of the old. 

Before leaving this wonderful subject of 
soil inoculation, a word about Professor Nobbe 
himself will surely be of interest. I visited 
his laboratory and saw his experiments. 

Tharandt, in Saxony, where Professor 
Nobbe has carried on his investigations for 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 197 

over thirty years, is a little village set pictur- 
esquely among the Saxon hills, about half an 
hour's ride by railroad from the city of Dres- 
den. Here is located the Forest Academy of 
the Kingdom, with which Professor Nobbe is 
prominently connected, and here also is the 
agricultural experiment station of which he is 
director. He has been for more than forty 
years the editor of one of the most important 
scientific publications in Germany ; he is chair- 
man of the Imperial Society of Agricultural 
Station Directors, and he has been the recipient 
of many honours. 

We now come to a consideration of the 
other method — the fixing of nitrogen by ma- 
chinery: a practical problem for the inventor. 

Every one has noticed the peculiar fresh 
smell of the air which follows a thunderstorm; 
the same pungent odour appears in the vicin- 
ity of a frictional electric machine when in 
operation. This smell has been attributed to 
ozone, but it is now thought that it may be due 
to oxides of nitrogen ; in other words, the elec- 
tric discharges of lightning or of the frictional 
machine have burned the air — that is, com- 



198 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

bined the nitrogen and oxygen of the air, 
forming oxides of nitrogen. 

The fact that an electric spark will thus 




Mr. Charles S. Bradley. 

form an oxide of nitrogen has long been 
known, but it remained for two American in- 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 199 

ventors, Mr. Charles S. Bradley and Mr. D. 
R. Love joy, of Niagara Falls, N. Y., to work 
out a way by inventive genius for applying this 
scientific fact to a practical purpose, thereby 
originating a great new industry. I shall not 
attempt here to describe 
the long process of experi- 
mentation which led up to 
the success of their enter- 
prise. Here was their raw 
material all around them 
in the air ; their problem 
was to produce a large 
number of very hot electric 
flames in a confined space 
or box so that air could be 
passed through, rapidly burned, and convert- 
ed into oxides of nitrogen (nitric oxides and 
peroxides), which could afterward be col- 
lected. They took the power supplied by the 
great turbine wheels at Niagara Falls and pro- 
duced a current of 10,000 volts, a pressure 
far above anything ever used before for prac- 
tical purposes in this country. This was led 
into a box or chamber of metal six feet high 




Mr. D. R. Lovejoy. 



200 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

and three feet in diameter — the box having 
openings to admit the air. By means of a re- 
volving cyhnder the electric current is made to 
produce a rapid continuance of very brilliant 




Eight-Inch 10;,000-Volt Arcs Burning the Air for Fixing 
Nitrogen. 

arcs, exactly like the glaring white arc of the 
arc-lamp, only much more intense, a great deal 
hotter. The air driven in through and around 
these hot arcs is at once burned, combining the 
oxygen and nitrogen of which it is composed 



INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 203 

and producing the desired oxides of nitrogen. 
These are led along to a chamber where they 
are combined with water, producing nitric or 
nitrous acid; or if the gases are brought into 
contact with caustic potash, saltpetre is the re- 
sult; if with caustic soda, nitrate of soda is 
the product — a very valuable fertiliser. And 
the inventors have been able to produce these 
various results at an expense so low that they 
can sell their output at a profit in competition 
with nitrates from other sources, thus giving 
the world a new source of fertiliser at a mod- 
erate price. 

In this way the power of Niagara has be- 
come a factor in the food question, a defence 
against the ultimate hunger of the human 
race. And when we think of the hundreds of 
other great waterfalls to be utilised, and with 
our growing knowledge of electricity this 
utilisation will become steadily cheaper, easier, 
it would seem th-^^^ ''^^ • --..-tor h^d already 
found a way to help the farmer. Then there 
is the boundless power of the tides going to 
waste, of the direct rays of the sun utilised 
by some such sun motoi as that described in 



204. BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

another chapter of this book, which in time 
may be called to operate upon the bomidless 
reservoir of nitrogen in the air for helping 
to produce the future food for the human 
race. 




MARCONI. 



The Sending of an Epoch-Making Message. 

January 18^ 1903^ marks the hef/inning of a new era in telegraphic 
communication. On that day there icas sent hy Marconi him- 
self from the wireless station at South Welljfeet^ Cape Cod^ 
Mass.^ to the station at Poldhu^ Cornwall, England, a distance 
of 3,000 miles, the message — destined soon to he historic — from 
the President of the United States to the King of England. 



CHAPTER VII 

MARCONI AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 

Neiio Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy, 

No invention of modern times, perhaps, comes 
so near to being what we call a miracle as 
the new system of telegraphy without wires. 
The very thought of communicating across 
the hundreds of miles of blue ocean between 
Europe and America with no connection, no 
wires, nothing but air, sunshine, space, is al- 
most inconceivably wonderful. A few years 
ago the mere suggestion of such a thing would 
have been set down as the wildest flight of 
imagination, unbelievable, perfectly impossi- 
ble. And yet it has come to pass! 

Think for a moment of sitting here on the 
shore of America and quietly listening to 
words sent through space across some 3,000 
miles of ocean from the edge of Europe! A 

20T 



208 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

cable, marvellous as it is, maintains a real con- 
nection between speaker and hearer. We feel 
that it is a road along which our speech can 
travel; we can grasp its meaning. But in 
telegraphing without wires we have nothing 
but space, poles with pendent wires on one side 
of the broad, curving ocean, and similar poles 
and wires (or perhaps only a kite struggling 
in the air) on the other — and thought passing 
between ! 

I have told in the first ''Boys' Book of In- 
ventions" of Guglielmo Marconi's early ex- 
periments. That was a chapter of uncertain 
beginnings, of great hopes, of prophecy. 
This is the sequel, a chapter of achievement 
and success. What was only a scientific and 
inventive novelty a few years ago has be- 
come a great practical enterprise, giving 
promise of changing the whole world of men, 
drawing nations more closely together, mak- 
ing us near neighbours to the English and the 
Germans and the French — in short, shrink- 
ing our earth. There may come a time when 
we will think no more of sending a Marconi- 
gram, or an etheragram, or whatever is to be 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 209 

the name of the message by wireless telegra- 
phy, to an acquaintance in England than we 
now think of calling up our neighbour on the 
telephone. 

Every one will recall the astonishment that 
swept over the country in December, 1901, 
when there came the first meagre reports of 
Marconi's success in telegraphing across the 
Atlantic Ocean between England and New- 
foundland. At first few would believe the re- 
ports, but when Thomas A. Edison, Graham 
Bell, and other great inventors and scientists 
had expressed their confidence in Marconi's 
achievement, the whole country was ready to 
hail the young inventor with honours. And 
his successes since those December days have 
been so pronounced — for he had now sent mes- 
sages both ways across the Atlantic and at 
much greater distances — have more than borne 
out the promise then made. Wireless tele- 
grams can now be sent directly from the 
shore of Massachusetts to England, and 
ocean-going ships are being rapidly equipped 
with the Marconi apparatus so that they can 
keep in direct communication with both conti- 



210 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS' 

nents during every day of the voyage. On 
some of the great ships a Httle newspaper is 
pubhshed, giving the world's news as received 
from day to day. 

It was the good fortune of the writer to 
arrive in St. John's, Newfoundland, during 
Mr. Marconi's experiments in December, 
1901, only a short time after the famous first 
message across the Atlantic had been received. 
Three months later it was also the writer's 
privilege to visit the Marconi station at Poldhu, 
in Cornwall, England, from which the mes- 
sage had been sent, Mr. Marconi being then 
planning his greater work of placing his inven- 
tion on a practical basis so that his company 
could enter the field of commercial telegraphy. 
It was the writer's fortune to have many talks 
with Mr. Marconi, both in America and in 
England, to see him at his experiments, and to 
write some of the earliest accounts of his suc- 
cesses. The story here told is the result of 
these talks. 

Mr. Marconi kept his own counsel regard- 
ing his plans in coming to Newfoundland in 
December, 1901. He told nobody, except his 



MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 211 

assistants, that he was going to attempt the 
great feat of communicating across the At- 
lantic Ocean. Though feehng very certain of 
success, he knew that the world would not be- 
lieve him, would perhaps only laugh at him 
for his great plans. The project was entirely 
too daring for public announcement. Some- 
thing might happen, some accident to the ap- 
paratus, that would cause a delay; people 
would call this failure, and it would be more 
difficult another time to get any one to put 
confidence in the work. So Marconi very 
wisely held his peace, only announcing what 
he had done when success was assured. 

Mr. Marconi landed at St. John's, New- 
foundland, on December 6, 1901, with his two 
assistants, Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget. 

He set up his instruments in a low room of 
the old barracks on Signal Hill, which stands 
sentinel at the harbour mouth half a mile from 
the city of St. John's. So simple and easily 
arranged is the apparatus that in three days' 
time the inventor was prepared to begin his 
experiments. On Wednesday, the 11th, as a 
preliminary test of the wind velocity, he sent 



212 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

up one of his kites, a huge hexagonal aiFair 
of bamboo and silk nine feet high, built on 
the Baden-Powell model: the wind promptly 
snapped the wire and blew the kite out to sea. 
He then filled a 14-foot hydrogen balloon, 
and sent it upward through a thick fog bank. 
Hardly had it reached the limit of its tether- 
ings, however, when the aerial wire on which 
he had depended for receiving his messages 
fell to the earth, the balloon broke away, and 
was never seen again. On Thursday, the 
12th, a day destined to be important in the 
annals of invention, Marconi tried another 
kite, and though the weather was so blustery 
that it required the combined strength of the 
inventor and his assistants to manage the teth- 
erings, they succeeded in holding the kite at 
an elevation of about 400 feet. Marconi was 
now prepared for the crucial test. Before 
leaving England he had given detailed in- 
structions to his assistants for the transmission 
of a certain signal, the Morse telegraphic S, 
represented by three dots (...), at a fixed 
time each day, beginning as soon as they re- 
ceived word that everything at St. John's was 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 215 

in readiness. This signal was to be clicked out 
on the transmitting instruments near Poldhu, 
Cornwall, the southwestern tip of England, 
and radiated from a number of aerial wires 
pendent from masts 210 feet high. If the in- 
ventor could receive on his kite-wire in New- 
foundland some of the electrical waves thus 
produced, he knew that he held the solution of 
the problem of transoceanic wireless telegra- 
phy. He had cabled his assistants to begin 
sending the signals at three o'clock in the 
afternoon, English time, continuing until six 
o'clock; that is, from about 11.30 to 2.30 
o'clock in St. John's. 

At noon on Thursday (December 12, 1901) 
Marconi sat waiting, a telephone receiver at 
his ear, in a room of the old barracks on Signal 
Hill. To him it must have been a moment of 
painful stress and expectation. Arranged on 
the table before him, all its parts within easy 
reach of his hand, was the delicate receiving 
instrument, the supreme product of years of 
the inventor's life, now to be submitted to a 
decisive test. A wire ran out through the win- 
dow, thence to a pole, thence upward to the 



2l6 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

kite which could be seen swaying high over- 
head. It was a bluff, raw day; at the base of 
the cliff 300 feet below thundered a cold sea; 
oceanward through the mist rose dimly the 
rude outlines of Cape Spear, the easternmost 
reach of the North American Continent. Be- 
yond that rolled the unbroken ocean, nearly 
2,000 miles to the coast of the British Isles. 
Across the harbour the city of St. John's lay 
on its hillside wrapped in fog: no one had 
taken enough interest in the experiments to 
come up here through the snow to Signal 
Hill. Even the ubiquitous reporter was ab- 
sent. In Cabot Tower, near at hand, the old 
signalman stood looking out to sea, watching 
for ships, and little dreaming of the mysteri- 
ous messages coming that way from England. 
Standing on that bleak hill and gazing out 
over the waste of water to the eastward, one 
finds it difFcult indeed to realise that this won- 
der could have become a reality. The faith of 
the inventor in his creation, in the kite-wire, 
and in the instruments which had grown under 
his hand, was unshaken. 

"I beheved from the first," he told me, "that 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 219 

I would be successful in getting signals across 
the Atlantic." 

Only two persons were present that Thurs- 
day noon in the room where the instruments 
were set up — Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp. 
Everything had been done that could be done. 
The receiving apparatus was of unusual sensi- 
tiveness, so that it would catch even the faint- 
est evidence of the signals. A telephone re- 
ceiver, which is no part of the ordinary 
instrument, had been supplied, so that the 
slightest clicking of the dots might be con- 
veyed to the inventor's ear. For nearly half 
an hour not a sound broke the silence of the 
room. Then quite suddenly Mr. Kemp heard 
the sharp click of the tapper as it struck 
against the coherer; this, of course, was not 
the signal, yet it was an indication that some- 
thing was coming. The inventor's face 
showed no evidence of excitement. Presently 
he said: 

''See if you can hear anything, Kemp." 
Mr. Kemp took the receiver, and a moment 
later, faintly and yet distinctly and unmis- 
takably, came the three Httle clicks — the dots 



220 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

of the letter S, tapped out an instant before 
in England. At ten minutes past one, more 
signals came, and both Mr. Marconi and Mr. 
Kemp assured themselves again and again 
that there could be no mistake. During this 
time the kite gyrated so wildly in the air that 
the receiving wire was not maintained at the 
same height, as it should have been ; but again, 
at twenty minutes after two, other repetitions 
of the signal were received. 

Thus the problem was solved. One of the 
great wonders of science had been wrought. 
But the inventor went down the hill toward 
the city, now bright with lights, feeling de- 
pressed and disheartened — the rebound from 
the stress of the preceding days. On the fol- 
lowing afternoon, Friday, he succeeded in 
getting other repetitions of the signal from 
England, but on Saturday, though he made 
an effort, he was unable to hear anything. 
The signals were,, of course, sent continuously, 
but the inventor was unable to obtain continu- 
ous results, owing, as he explains, to the fluc- 
tuations of the height of the kite as it was 
blown about by the wind, and to the extreme 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 221 

delicacy of his instruments, which required 
constant adjustment during the experiments. 

Even now that he had been successful, the 
inventor hesitated to make his achievement 
public, lest it seem too extraordinary for belief. 
Finally, after withholding the great news 
for two days, certainly an evidence of self- 
restraint, he gave out a statement to the press, 
and on Sunday morning the world knew and 
doubted; on Monday it knew more and be- 
lieved. Many, like Mr. Edison, awaited the 
inventor's signed announcement before they 
would credit the news. Sir Cavendish Bovle, 
the Governor of Newfoundland, reported at 
once to King Edward ; and the cable company 
which has exclusive rights in Newfoundland, 
alarmed at an achievement which threatened 
the very existence of its business, demanded 
that he desist from further experiments within 
its territory, truly an evidence of the belief of 
practical men in the future commercial im- 
portance of the invention. It is not a little 
significant of the increased willingness of the 
world, born of expanding knowledge, to ac- 
cept a new scientific wonder, that Mr. Mar- 



iititl BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

colli 's announcement should have been so 
eagerly and so generally believed, and that 
the popular imagination should have been so 
fired with its possibilities. One cannot but re- 
call the struggle against doubt, prejudice, and 
disbelief in which the promoters of the first 
transatlantic cable were forced to engage. 
Even after the first cable was laid (in 1858), 
and messages had actually been transmitted, 
there were many who denied that it had ever 
been successfully operated, and would hardly 
be convinced even by the affidavits of those 
concerned in the work. But in the years since 
then, Edison, Bell, Rontgen, and many other 
famous inventors and scientists have taught 
the world to be chary of its disbelief. Outside 
of this general disposition to friendliness, how- 
ever, JNIarconi on his own part had well earned 
the credit of the careful and conservative sci- 
entist; his previous successes made it the more 
easy to credit his new achievement. For, as 
an Enghshman (INIr. Flood Page), in defend- 
ing;' ^Ir. Marconi's announcement, has pointed 
out, the inventor has never made any state- 
ment in public until he has been absolutelv cer- 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 223 

tain of the fact; he has never had to with- 
draw any statement that he has made as to 
his progress in the past. And these facts un- 
questionably carried great weight in convinc- 
ing Mr. Edison, Mr. Graham Bell, and others 
of equal note of the literal truth of his report. 
It was astonishing how overwhelmingly credit 
came from every quarter of the world, from 
high and low alike, from inventors, scientists, 
statesmen, royalty. Before Marconi left St. 
John's he was already in receipt of a large 
mail — the inevitable letters of those who would 
offer congratulations, give advice, or ask fa- 
vours. He received oifers to lecture, to write 
articles, to visit this, that, and the other place 
— and all within a week after the news of his 
success. The people of the "ancient colony" 
of Newfoundland, famed for their hospitality, 
crowned him with every honour in their power. 
I accompanied Mr. Marconi across the island 
on his way to Nova Scotia, and it seemed as 
if every fisher and farmer in that wild country 
had heard of him, for when the train stopped 
they came crowding to look in at the window. 
From the comments I heard, they wondered 



224 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

most at the inventor's youthful appearance. 
Though he was only twenty-seven years old, 
his experience as an inventor covered many 
years, for he began experimenting in wireless 
telegraphy before he was twenty. At twenty- 
two he came to London from his Italian home, 
and convinced the British Post-OfRce Depart- 
ment that he had an important idea ; at twenty- 
three he was famous the world over. 

Following this epoch-making success Mr. 
JNIarconi returned to England, where he con- 
tinued most vigorously the work of perfect- 
ing his invention, installing more powerful 
transmitters, devising new receivers, all the 
time with the intention of following up his 
Newfoundland experiments with the inaugu- 
ration of a complete system of wireless trans- 
mission between America and Europe. In the 
latter part of the year 1902 he succeeded in 
opening regular communication between Nova 
Scotia and England, and January 18, 1903, 
marked another epoch in his work. On that 
day there was sent by Marconi himself from 
the wireless station at South Wellfleet, Cape 
Cod, Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Cornwall, 



MARCONI S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 'Z^Zo 

England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the mes- 
sage — destined to be historic — from the Presi- 
dent of the United States to the King of Eng- 
land. 

It will be interesting to know something of 
the inventor himself. He is somewhat above 
medium height, and, though of a highly strung 
temperament, he is deliberate in his move- 
ments. Unlike the inventor of tradition, he 
dresses with scrupulous neatness, and, in spite 
of being a prodigious worker, he finds time to 
enjoy a limited amount of club and social life. 
The portrait published with this chapter, taken 
at St. John's a few days after the experiments, 
gives a very good idea of the inventor's face, 
though it cannot convey the peculiar lustre of 
his eyes when he is interested or excited — and 
perhaps it makes him look older than he really 
is. One of the first and strongest impressions 
that the man conveys is that of intense nervous 
activity and mental absorption; he has a way 
of pouncing upon a knotty question as if he 
could not wait to solve it. He talks little, is 
straightforward and unassuming, submitting 
good-naturedly, although with evident unwill- 



226 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

ingness, to being lionised. In his public ad- 
dresses he has been clear and sensible; he has 
never written for any publication; nor has he 
engaged in scientific disputes, and even when 
violently attacked he has let his work prove 
his point. And he has accepted his success 
with calmness, almost unconcern; he certainly 
expected it. The only elation I saw him ex- 
press was over the attack of the cable monop- 
oly in Newfoundland, which he regarded as 
the greatest tribute that could have been paid 
his achievement. During all his life, opposi- 
tion has been his keenest spur to greater effort. 
Though he was born and educated in Italy, 
his mother was of British birth, and he speaks 
English as perfectly as he does Itahan. In- 
deed, his blue eyes, light hair, and fair com- 
plexion give him decidedly the appearance of 
an Englishman, so that a stranger meeting 
him for the first time would never suspect his 
Italian parentage. His parents are still liv- 
ing, spending part of their time on their estate 
in Italy and part of the time in London. One 
of the first messages conveying the news of 
his success at St. John's went to them. He 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 227 

embarked in experimental research because he 
loved it, and no amount of honour or money 
tempts him from the pursuit of the great 
things in electricity which he sees before him. 
Besides being an inventor, he is also a shrewd 
business man, with a clear appreciation of the 
value of his inventions and of their possibili- 
ties when generally introduced. What is 
more, he knows how to go about the task of 
introducing them. 

No sooner had Marconi announced the suc- 
cess of his Newfoundland experiments than 
critics began to raise objections. Might not 
the signals which he received have been sent 
from some passing ship fitted with wireless- 
telegraphy apparatus? Or, might they not 
have been the result of electrical disturbances 
in the atmosphere? Or, granting his ability to 
communicate across seas, how could he pre- 
serve the secrecy of his messages? If they 
were transmitted into space, why was it not 
possible for any one with a receiving instru- 
ment to take them? And was not his system 
of transmission too slow to make it useful, or 
was it not rendered uncertain by storms? And 



2i28 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

SO on indefinitely. An acquaintance with 
some of the principles which JNIarconi consid- 
ers fundamental, and on which his work has 
been based, will help to clear away these ob- 
jections and give some conception of the real 
meaning and importance of the work at St. 
John's and of the plans for the future devel- 
opment of the inventor's system. 

In the first place, Mr. Marconi makes no 
claim to being the first to experiment along 
the lines which led to wireless telegraphy, or 
the first to signal for short distances without 
wires. He is prompt with his acknowledg- 
ment to other workers in his field, and to his 
assistants. Professor S. F. B. jNIorse, the in- 
ventor of telegraphy; Dr. Oliver Lodge and 
Sir William Preece, of England; Edison. 
Tesla, and Professors Trowbridge and Dol- 
bear, of America, and others had experi- 
mented along these lines, but it remained fo- 
^Marconi to perfect a system and put it into 
practical working order. He took the cohere^' 
of Branley and Calzecchi, the oscillator o" 
Righi, he used the discoveries of Henry and 
Hertz, but his creation, like that of the poet 



MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 229 

who gathers the words of men in a perfect 
lyric, was none the less brilliant and original. 
In its bare outlines, Marconi's system of 
telegraphy consists in setting in motion, by 




means of his transmitter, certain electric waves 
which, passing through the ether, are received 
on a distant wire suspended from a kite or 
mast, and registered on his receiving appa- 
ratus. The ether is a mysterious, unseen, 



230 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

colourless, odourless, inconceivably rarefied 
something which is supposed to fill all space. 
It has been compared to a jelly in which the 
stars and planets are set like cherries. About 
all we know of it is that it has waves — that the 
jelly may be made to vibrate in various ways. 
Etheric vibrations of certain kinds give light; 
other kinds give heat; others electricity. Ex- 
periments have shown that if the ether vibrates 
at the inconceivable swiftness of 400 billions 
of waves a second we see the colour red, if 
twice as fast we see violet, if more slowly — 
perhaps 230 millions to the second, and less — 
we have the Hertz waves used by Marconi in 
his wireless-telegraphy experiments. Ether 
waves should not be confounded with air 
waves. Sound is a result of the vibration of 
the air; if we had ether and no air, we should 
still see light, feel heat, and have electrical 
phenomena, but no sound would ever come 
to our ears. Air is sluggish beside ether, and 
sound waves are very slow compared with 
ether waves. During a storm the ether brings 
the flash of the lightning before the air brings 
the sound of thunder, as every one knows. 




r/-; ■ 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 233 

Electricity is, indeed, only another name for 
certain vibrations in the ether. We say that 
electricity "flows" in a wire, but nothing really 
passes except an etheric wave, for the atoms 
composing the wire, as well as the air and the 
earth, and even the hardest substances, are all 
afloat in ether. Vibrations, therefore, started 
at one end of the wire travel to the other. 
Throw a stone into a quiet pond. Instantly 
waves are formed which spread out in every 
direction; the water does not move, except up 
and down, yet the wave passes onward indefi- 
nitely. Electric waves cannot be seen, but 
electricians have learned how to incite them, 
to a certain extent how to control them, and 
have devised cunning instruments which reg- 
ister their presence. 

Electrical waves have long been harnessed 
by the use of wires for sending communica- 
tions; in other words, we have had wire teleg- 
raphy. But the ether exists outside of the 
wire as well as within; therefore, having the 
ether everywhere, it must be possible to pro- 
duce waves in it which will pass anywhere, as 
well through mountains as over seas, and if 



234 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

these waves can be controlled they will evi- 
dently convey messages as easily and as cer- 
tainly as the ether within wires. So argued 
Mr. Marconi. The difficulty lay in making 
an instrument which would produce a peculiar 
kind of wave, and in receiving and registering 
this wave in a second apparatus located at a 
distance from the first. It was, therefore, a 
practical mechanical problem which Marconi 
had to meet. Beginning with crude tin boxes 
set up on poles on the grounds of his father's 
estate in Italy, he finally devised an apparatus 
from which a current generated by a battery 
and passing in brilliant sparks between two 
brass balls was radiated from a wire suspended 
on a tall pole. By shutting off and turning 
on this peculiar current, by means of a device 
similar to the familiar telegrapher's key, the 
waves could be so divided as to represent 
dashes and dots, and spell out letters in the 
Morse alphabet. This was the transmitter. 
It was, indeed, simple enough to start these 
waves traveUing through space, to jar the 
etheric jelly, so to speak; but it was far more 
difficult to devise an apparatus to receive and 



MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 235 

register them. For this purpose Marconi 
adopted a device invented by an Itahan, Cal- 
zecchi, and improved by a Frenchman, M. 







Branley, called the coherer, and the very crux 
of the system, without which there could be no 
wireless telegraphy. This coherer, which he 
greatly improved, is merely a little tube of 



2S6 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS | 

glass as big around as a lead-pencil, and per- 
haps two inches long. It is plugged at each 
end with silver, the plugs nearly meeting 
within the tube. The narrow space between 
them is filled with finely powdered fragments 
of nickel and silver, which possess the strange 
property of being alternatelj^ very good and 
very bad conductors of electrical waves. The 
waves which come from the transmitter, per- 
haps 2,000 miles away, are received on a sus- 
pended kite-wire, exactly similar to the wire 
used in the transmitter, but they are so weak 
that they could not of themselves operate an 
ordinary telegraph instrument. They do, 
however, possess strength enough to draw the 
little particles of silver and nickel in the co- 
herer together in a continuous metal path. In 
other words, they make these particles ''co- 
here," and the moment they cohere they be- 
come a good conductor for electricity, and a 
current from a battery near at hand rushes 
through, operates the Morse instrument, and 
causes it to print a dot or a dash ; then a little 
tapper, actuated by the same current, strikes 
against the coherer, the particles of metal are 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 237 

jarred apart or "decohered," becoming in- 
stantly a poor conductor, and thus stopping 
the strong current from the home battery. 







^.*^ ''m^ 




Another wave comes through space, down the 
suspended kite-wire, into the coherer, the c 
drawing the particles again together, and an- 
other dot or dash is printed. All these proc- 



238 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

esses are continued rapidly, until a complete 
message is ticked out on the tape. Thus Mr. 
Kemp knew when he heard the tapper strike 
the coherer that a signal was coming, though 
he could not hear the click of the receiver it- 
self. And this is in bare outline Mr. Mar- 
coni's invention — this is the combination of 
devices which has made wireless telegraphy 
possible, the invention on which he has taken 
out more than 132 patents in every civilised 
country of the world. Of course his instru- 
ments contain much of intricate detail, of mar- 
vellously ingenious adaptation to the needs of 
the work, but these are interesting chiefly to 
expert technicians. 

In his actual transoceanic experiments of 
December, 1901, Mr. Marconi's transmitting 
station in England was fitted with twenty 
masts 210 feet high, each with its suspended 
wire, though not all of them were used. A 
current of electricity sufficient to operate some 
300 incandescent lamps was used, the result- 
ing spark being so brilliant that one could not 
have looked at it with the unshaded eye. The 
wave which was thus generated had a length 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 239 

of about a fifth of a mile, and the rate of vi- 
bration was about 800,000 to the second. Fol- 
lowing the analogy of the stone cast in the 
pond with the ripples circling outward, these 
waves spread from the suspended wires in 
England in every direction, not only westward 
toward the cliif where Marconi was flying his 
kite, but eastward, northward, and southward, 
so that if some of Mr. Marconi's assistants had 
been flying kites, say on the shore of Africa, 
or South America, or in St. Petersburg, they 
might possibly, with a corresponding receiver, 
have heard the identical signals at the same 
instant. In his early experiments Marconi 
believed that great distances could not be ob- 
tained without very high masts and long, sus- 
pended wires, the greater the distance the 
taller the mast, on the theory that the waves 
were hindered by the curvature of the earth; 
but his later theory, substantiated by his New- 
foundland experiments, is that the waves some- 
how follow around the earth, conforming to 
its curve, and the next station he establishes in 
America will not be set high on a clifl*, as at 
St. John's, but down close to the water on 



;240 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

level land. His Newfoundland experiments 
have also convinced him that one of the secrets 
of successful long-distance transmission is the 
use of a more powerful current in his trans- 
mitter, and this he will test in his next triads 
between the continents. 

And now we come to the most import::!: t 
part of Mr. Marconi's work, the part least 
known even to science, and the field of almost 
illimitable future development. This is the 
system of "tuning," as the inventor calls it, the 
construction of a certain receiver so that it 
will respond only to the message sent by a cer- 
tain transmitter. When Marconi's discoveries 
were first announced in 1896, there existed no 
method of tuning, though the inventor had its 
necessity clearly in mind. Accordingly the 
public inquired, "How are you going to keep 
your messages secret? Supposing a warship 
wishes to communicate with another of the 
fleet, what is to prevent the enemy from read- 
ing your message? How are private business 
despatches to be secured against publicity?" 
Here, indeed, was a problem. Without se- 
crecy no system of wireless telegraphy could 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 243 

ever reach great commercial importance, or 
compete with the present cable communication. 
The inventor first tried using a parabolic cop- 
per reflector, by means of which he could radi- 
ate the electric waves exactly as light — ^which, 
it will be borne in mind, is only another kind 
of etheric wave — is reflected by a mirror. This 
reflector could be faced in any desired direc- 
tion, and only a receiver located in that direc- 
tion would respond to the message. But there 
were grave objections to the reflector; an ene- 
my might still creep in between the sending 
and receiving stations, and, moreover, it was 
found that the curvature of the earth inter- 
fered with the transmission of reflected mes- 
sages, thereby limiting their usefulness to short 
distances. 

In passing, however, it may be interesting 
to note one extraordinary use for this reflect- 
ing system which the inventor now has in 
mind. This is in connection with lighthouse 
work. Ships are to be provided with reflect- 
ing instruments which in dense fog or storms 
can be used exactly as a searchlight is now 
employed on a dark night to discover the loca- 



244 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

tion of the lighthouses or hghtships. For in- 
stance, the hghthouse, say, on some rocky 
point on the New England coast would con- 
tinually radiate a warning from its suspended 
wire. These waves pass as readily through 
fog and darkness and storm as in daylight. 
A ship out at sea, hidden in fog, has lost its 
bearings; the sound of the warning horn, if 
warning there is, seems to come first from one 
direction, then from another, as sounds do in 
a fog, luring the ship to destruction. If now 
the mariner is provided with a wireless reflec- 
tor, this instrument can be slowly turned until 
it receives the lighthouse warning, the captain 
thus learning his exact location; if in distress, 
he can even communicate with the lighthouse. 
Think also what an advantage such an equip- 
ment would be to vessels entering a dangerous 
harbour in thick weather. This is one of the 
developments of the near future. 

The reflector system being impracticable for 
long-distance work, Mr. Marconi experiment- 
ed with tuning. He so constructed a receiver 
that it responds only to a certain transmitter. 
That is, if the transmitter is radiating 800,000 



MARCONI'S GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 245 

vibrations a second, the corresponding receiver 
will take only 800,000 vibrations. In exactly 
the same v/ay a familiar tuning fork will re- 
spond only to another tuning fork having ex- 
actly the same ''tune," or number of vibra- 
tions per second. And Mr. Marconi has now 
succeeded in bringing this tuning system to 
some degree of perfection, though very much 
work yet remains to be done. For instance, 
in one of his English experiments, at Poole in 
England, he had two receivers connected with 
the same wire, and tuned to different trans- 
mitters located at St. Catherine's Point. Two 
messages were sent, one in English and one 
in French. Both were received at the same 
time on the same wire at Poole, but one re- 
ceiver rolled off its message in English, the 
other in French, without the least interference. 
And so when critics suggested that the in- 
ventor may have been deceived at St. John's 
by messages transmitted from ocean liners, he 
was able to respond promptly: 

''Impossible. My instrument was tuned to 
receive only from my station in Cornwall." 

Indeed, the only wireless-telegraph appa- 



246 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

ratus that could possibly have been withm 
hundreds of miles of Newfoundland would be 
one of the Marconi-fitted steamers, and the 
*'cair' of a steamer is not the letter "S," but 

The importance of the new system of tun- 
ing can hardly be overestimated. By it all 
the ships of a fleet can be provided with in- 
struments tuned alike, so that they may com- 
municate freely with one another, and have 
no fear that the enemy will read the messages. 
The spy of the future must be an electrical 
expert who can slip in somehow and steal the 
secret of the enemy's tunes. Great telegraph 
companies will each have its own tuned instru- 
ments, to receive only its own messages, and 
there may be special tunes for each of the im- 
portant governments of the world. Or per- 
haps (for the system can be operated very 
cheaply ) the time will even come when the great 
banking and business houses, or even families 
and friends, will each have its own wireless 
system, with its own secret tune. Having 
variations of millions of different vibrations, 
there will be no lack of tunes. For instance, 



it,: '•- ^ 




MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 249 

the British navy may be tuned to receive only 
messages of 700,000 vibrations to the second^ 
the German navy 1,500,000, the United States 
Government 1,000,000, and so on indefinitely. 

Tuning also makes multiplex wireless teleg- 
raphy a possibility; that is, many messages 
may be sent or received on the same suspended 
wire. Supposing, for instance, the operator 
was sending a hurry press despatch to a news- 
paper. He has two transmitters, tuned dif- 
ferently, connected with his wire. He cuts the 
despatch in two, sends the first half on one 
transmitter, and the second on the other, there- 
by reducing by half the time of transmission. 

A sort of impression prevails that wireless 
telegraphy is still largely in the uncertain ex- 
perimental stage; but, as a matter of fact, it 
has long since passed from the laboratory to 
a wide commercial use. Its development since 
Mr. Marconi's first paper was read, in 1896, 
and especially since the first message was sent 
from England to France across the Channel 
in March, 1899, has been astonishingly rapid. 
Most of the ships of the great navies of Eu- 
rope and all the important ocean liners are 



250 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

now fitted with the ' 'wireless" instruments. 
The system has been recently adopted by the 
Lloyds of England, the greatest of shipping 
exchanges. It is being used on many light- 
ships, and the New York Herald receives 
daily reports from vessels at sea, communi- 
cated from a ship station off Nantucket. 
Were there space to be spared, many incidents 
might be told showing in what curious and 
wonderful ways the use of the "wireless" in- 
struments has saved life and property, to say 
nothing of facilitating business. 

And it cannot now be long before a regular 
telegraph business will be conducted between 
Massachusetts and England, through the new 
stations. Mr. Marconi informed me that he 
would be able to build and equip stations 
on both sides of the Atlantic for less than 
$150,000, the subsequent charge for main- 
tenance being very small. A cable across the 
Atlantic costs between $3,000,000 and $4,000,- 
000, and it is a constant source of expenditure 
for repairs. The inventor will be able to 
transmit with single instruments about twenty 
words a minute, and at a cost ridiculously 



MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 251 

small compared with the present cable tolls. 
He said in a speech delivered at a dinner 
given him by the Governor at St. John's that 
messages which now go by cable at twenty- 
five cents a word might be sent profitably at a 
cent a word or less, which is even much cheaper 
than the very cheapest present rates in Amer- 
ica for messages by land wires. It is esti- 
mated that about $400,000,000 is invested in 
cable systems in various parts of the world. 
If Marconi succeeds as he hopes to succeed, 
much of the vast network of wires at the bot- 
tom of the world's oceans, represented by this 
investment, will lose its usefulness. It is now 
the inventor's purpose to push the work of in- 
stallation between the continents as rapidly as 
possible, and no one need be surprised if the 
year 1902 sees his system in practical opera- 
tion. Along with this transatlantic work he 
intends to extend his system of transmission 
between ships at sea and the ports on land, 
with a view to enabling the shore stations to 
maintain constant communication with vessels 
all the way across the Atlantic. If he succeeds 
in doing this, there will at last be no escape 



252 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

for the weary from the daily news of the 
world, so long one of the advantages of an 
ocean voyage. For every morning each ship, I 
though in mid-ocean, will get its bulletin of ' 
news, the ship's printing-press will strike it 
off, and it will be served hot with the coffee. 
Yet think what such a system will mean to 
ships in distress, and how often it will relieve 
the anxiety of friends awaiting the delayed 
voyager. 

Mr. Marconi's faith in his invention is 
boundless. He told me that one of the proj- 
ects which he hoped soon to attempt was 
to communicate between England and New 
Zealand. If the electric waves follow the 
curvature of the earth, as the Newfoundland 
experiments indicate, he sees no reason why he 
should not send signals 6,000 or 10,000 miles 
as easily as 2,000. 

Then there is the whole question of the use 
of wireless telegraphy on land, a subject 
hardly studied, though messages have already 
been sent upward of sixty miles overland. 
The new system will certainly prove an im- 
portant adjunct on land in war-time, for it 



MARCONrS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 253 

will enable generals to signal, as they have 
done in South Africa, over comparatively long 
distances in fog and storm, and over stretches 
where it might be impossible for the telegraph 
corps to string wires or for couriers to pass 
on account of the presence of the enemy. 




Work on the Smith Point Lighthouse Stopped by a Vio- 
lent Storm. 

Jtist after the cylinder had been set in place, and while the woi^kmen 
were harn/ing to stow sufficient ballast to secure it against a heavy 
sea, a storm forced the attending steamer to draw away. One 
of the barges was almost overturned, and a lifeboat was driven 
against the cylinder a7id crushed to pieces. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SEA-BUILDERS 

The Story of Lighthouse Building — Stone-tower Light- 
houses^ Iron Pile Lighthouses^ and Steel 
Cylinder Lighthouses 

A sturdy English oak furnished the model 
for the first of the great modern lighthouses. 
A little more than one hundred and forty 
years ago John Smeaton, maker of odd and 
intricate philosophical instruments and dab- 
bler in mechanical engineering, was called 
upon to place a light upon the bold and dan- 
gerous reefs of Eddy stone, near Plymouth, 
England. John Smeaton never had built a 
lighthouse; but he was a man of great in- 
genuity and courage, and he knew the kind 
of lighthouse not to build; for twice before 
the rocks of Eddy stone had been marked, and 
twice the mighty waves of the Atlantic had 
bowled over the work of the builders as easily 
as they would have overturned a skiff. Win- 

255 



256 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

Stanley, he of song and story, designed the 
first of these structures, and he and all his 
keepers lost their lives when the light went 
down; the other, the work of John Rudyerd, 
was burned to the water's edge, and one of the 




Robert Stevenson, Builder of the Famous Bell Rock 
Li^luhouse, and Author of Important Inventions 
and Improvements in the System of Sea Lighting. 

From a bust hy Joseph^ now in the library of Bell Rock Lighthouse, 

keepers, strangely enough, died from the ef- 
fects of melting lead which fell from the roof 
and entered his open mouth as he gazed up- 
ward. Both of these lighthouses were of woo ^ 
and hoth were ornamented with balconies an.. 










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TOa § 


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SEA-BUILDERS 259 

bay-windows, which furnished ready holds for 
the rough handHng of the wind. 

John Smeaton walked in the woods and 
thought of all these problems. He tells 
quaintly in his memoirs how he observed the 
strength with which an oak-tree bore its great 
weight of leaves and branches; and when he 
built his lighthouse, it was wide and flaring at 
the base, like the oak, and deeply rooted into 
the sea-rock with wedges of wood and iron. 
The waist was tapering and cylindrical, bear- 
ing the weight of the keeper's quarters and 
the lantern as firmly and jauntily as the oak 
bears its branches. Moreover, he built of 
stone, to avoid the possibility of fire, and he 
dovetailed each stone into its neighbour, so 
that the whole tower would face the wind and 
the waves as if it were one solid mass of gran- 
ite. For years Smeaton's Eddystone blinked 
a friendly warning to English mariners, serv- 
ing its purpose perfectly, until the Brothers 
of Trinity saw fit to build a larger tower in 
its place. 

In England the famous lighthouses of Be'l 
Rock, built by Robert Stevenson, Skerryvore, 



iCO rOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

and Wolf Rock 
are all stone tow- 
ers ; and in our 
own country, Min- 
ot's Ledge, off 
Boston Harbour, 
more difficult of 
construction than 
any of them, Spec- 
tacle Reef light in 
Lake Huron, and 
Stannard Rock 
light in Lake Su- 
perior are good 
examples of Smea- 
ton's method of 
building. 

The mighty 
stone tower still 
remains for many 
purposes the most 
effective method 
of lighting the 
pathways of the 
sea, but it is both 




The Present Lighthouse on Min- 
ot's Ledge, near the Entrance 
of Massachusetts Bay, Fifteen 
Miles Southeast of Boston. 

•* Rising sheer out of the sea^ like a huge 
stone cannon^ mouth upward.^'' — 
Longfellow. 



SEA-BUILDERS 



261 



exceedingly difficult 
to build, and it is 
very expensive. 
Within comparative- 
ly recent years busy 
inventors have 
thought out several 
new plans for light- 
houses, which are 
quite as wonderful 
and important in 
their way as wireless 
telegraphy and the 
telephone are in the 
realm of electricity. 

One of these in- 
ventions is the iron- 
pile or screw- pile 
lighthouse, and the 
other is the iron cyl- 
inder lighthouse. I 
will tell the story of 
each of them sepa- 
rately. 

The skeleton-built 



wrw' 



W ^ ^l 



The Lighthouse on Stannaid 
Rock, Lake Superior. 

This is a stone-foirer /if/hfliousfi^ 
similar iii covstrurtion to the 
one. huilt vnth such (liffirultif on 
Spectacle Reef\ Lake Ihrnnt. 



262 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

iron-pile lighthouse bears much the same re- 
lation to the heavy stone tower lighthouse 
that a willow twig bears to a great oak. The 
latter meets the fury of wind and wave with 
stern resistance, opposing force to force; the 
former conquers its difficulties by avoiding 
them. 

A completed screw-pile lighthouse has the 
odd appearance of a huge, ugly spider stand- 
ing knee-deep in the sea. Its squat body is 
the home of the keeper, with a single bright 
eye of light at the top, and its long spindly 
legs are the iron piles on which the structure 
rests. Thirty years ago lighthouse builders 
were much pleased with the ease and apparent 
durability of the pile light. An Englishman 
named Mitchell had invented an iron pile hav- 
ing at the end a screw not unlike a large 
auger. By boring a number of these piles 
deep into the sand of the sea-bottom, and using 
them as the foundation for a small but durable 
iron building, he was enabled to construct a 
lighthouse in a considerable depth of water at 
small expense. Later builders have used or- 
dinary iron piles, which are driven into the 



SEA-BUILDERS 263 

smd with heavy sledges. Waves and tides 
p^ss readily through the open-work of the 
inundation, the legs of the spider, without dis- 
turbing the building overhead. For Southern 
waters, where there is no danger of moving 
ice-packs, lighthouses of this type have been 
found very useful, although the action of the 
salt Avater on the iron piling necessitates fre- 
quent repairs. More than eighty lights of this 
description dot the shoals of Florida and ad- 
joining States. Some of the oldest ones still 
remain in use in the North, notably the one 
on Brandywine shoal in Delaware Bay; but 
it has been found necessary to surround them 
v/ith strongly built ice-breakers. 

Tvv^o magnificent iron-pile lights are found 
on Fowey Rocks and American Shoals, off 
tjc coast of Florida, the first of which was 
built with so much difficulty that its story is 
most interesting. 

Fowey Reef lies five miles from the lov/ 
coral island of Soldier Key. Northern storms, 
sweeping down the Atlantic, brush in wild 
breakers over the reef and out upon the little 
key, often burying it entirely under a torrent 



264 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

■- ' « of water. Even 

^ in calm weather 
the sea is rarely 
quiet enough to 
make it safe for 
a vessel of any 
size to approach 
the reef. The 
builders erected 
a stout elevated 
wharf and store- 
houseonthekey, 
and brought 
their men and 
tools to await 
the opportunity 
to dart out when 
the sea was at 
rest and begin 
the work of 
marking the 
reef. Before 
shipment, the lighthouse, which was built in 
the North, was set up, complete from founda- 
tion to pinnacle, and thoroughly tested. 




The Fowey Rocks Lighthouse^ 
Florida. 



SEA-BUILDERS 260 

At length the workmen were able to remain 
on the reef long enough to build a strong- 
working platform twelve feet above the sur- 
face of the water, and set on iron-shod man- 
grove piles. Having established this base of 
operations in the enemy's domain, a heavy iron 
disk was lowered to the reef, and the first pile 
was driven through the hole at its centre. 
Elaborate tests were made after each blow of 
the sledge, and the slightest deviation from 
the vertical was promptly rectified with block 
and tackle. In two months' time nine piles 
were driven ten feet into the coral rock, the 
workmen toiling long hours under a blistering 
sun. When the time came to erect the super- 
structure, the sea suddenly awakened and 
storm followed storm, so that for weeks to- 
gether no one dared venture out to the reef. 
The men rusted and grumbled on the narrow 
docks of the key, and work was finally sus- 
pended for an entire winter. At the very first 
attempt to make a landing in the spring, a tor- 
nado drove the vessels far out of their coiu'se. 
But a crew was finally placed on the working 
platform, with enough food to last them sev- 



266 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

eral weeks, and there they stayed, suspended 
between the sea and the sky, until the structure 
was complete. This lighthouse cost $175,000. 

The famous Bug Light of Boston and 
Thimble Light of Hampton Roads, Va., are 
both good examples of the iron-pile light- 
house. 

Now we come to a consideration of iron 
cylinder lighthouses, w^hich are even more won- 
derful, perhaps, than the screw-piles, and in 
constructing them the sea-builder touches the 
pinnacle of his art. 

Imagine a sandy shoal marked only by a 
white-fringed breaker. The water rushes over 
it in swift and constantly varying currents, 
and if there is a capful of wind anywhere on 
the sea, it becomes an instant menace to the 
mariner. The shore may be ten or twenty 
miles away, so far that a land-light would only 
lure the seaman into peril, instead of guiding 
him safely on his way. A lightship is always 
uncertain; the first great storm may drive it 
from its moorings and leave the coast unpro- 
tected when protection is most necessary. 
Upon such a shoal, often covered from ten to 



SEA-BUILDERS 267 

twenty feet with water, the builder is called 
upon to construct a lighthouse, laying his 
foundation in shifting sand, and placing upon 
it a building strong enough to withstand any 
storm or the crushing weight of wrecks or ice- 
packs. 

It was less than twenty years ago that sea- 
builders first ventured to grapple with the dif- 
ficulties presented by these ofF-shore shoals. 
In 1881 Germany built the first iron cylin- 
der lighthouse at Rothersand, near the mouth 
of the Weser River, and three years later 
the Lighthouse Establishment of the United 
States planted a similar tower on Fourteen - 
Foot Banks, over three miles from the shores 
of Delaware Bay, in twenty feet of water. 
Since then many hitherto dangerous shoals 
have been marked by new lighthouses of this 
type. 

When a builder begins a stone tower light 
on some lonely sea-rock, he says to the sea, 
''Do your worst. I'm going to stick right 
here until this light is built, if it takes a hun- 
dred years." And his men are always on hand 
in fair weather or foul, dropping one stone 



r 



268 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

to-day and an-^ 
other to-morrow, 
and succeeding 
by virtue of 
steady grit and 
patience. The 
builder of the iron 
cyhnder hght pur- 
sues an exactly op- 
posite course. His 
warfare is more 
spirited, more 
modern. He 
stakes his whole 
success on a single 
desperate throw. 
If he fails, he loses 
everything : if he 
wins, he may 
throw again. His 
lighthouse is 
built, from foun- 
dation caisson to lantern, a hundred or a thou- 
sand miles away from the reef where it is 
finally to rest. It is simply an enormous cast- 



K^ 



t 




Foil rtcfu- Foot Bank Ligiit Sta- 
tion, Delaware Bay, Del. 



SEA-BUILDERS 269 

iron tube made in sections or courses, each 
about six feet high, not unhke the standpipe 
of a village water-works. The builder must 
set up this tube on the shoal, sink it deep into 
the sand bottom, and fill it with rocks and 
concrete mortar, so that it will not tip over. 
At first such a feat would seem absolutely 
impossible; but the sea-builder has his own 
methods of fighting. With all the material 
necessary to his work, he creeps up on the 
shoal and lies quietly in some secluded har- 
bour until the sea is calmly at rest, suspecting 
no attack. Then he darts out with his whole 
fleet, plants his foundation, and before the 
waves and the wind wake up he has estab- 
lished his outworks on the shoal. The story 
of the construction of one of these lighthouses 
will give a good idea of the terrible difficulties 
which their builders must overcome. 

Not long ago W. H. Flaherty, of New 
York, built such a lighthouse at Smith's Point, 
in Chesapeake Bay. At the mouth of the Po- 
tomac River the opposing tides and currents 
have built up shoals of sand extending eight 
or ten miles out into the bay. Here the waves, 



270 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

sweeping in from 
the open Atlantic, 
sometimes drown 
the side-hghts of 
the big Boston 
steamers, 'i he 
point has a gr ni 
story of wrecks 
and loss of life ; 
in 1897 alone, 
four sea-craft 
were driven in 
and swamped on 
Ihe shoals. The 
Lighthouse Es- 
tablish ment 
planned to set up 
the light just at 
the edge of the 
channel, and 120 
miles south of 
Baltimore. 

Eighty thou- 
sand dollars was 
appropriated for 




The Great Beds Light Station, 

Raritan Bay, N. J. 

A tpecimen of iron cylinder construction. 



SEA-BUILDERS 271 

doing the work. In August, 1896, the con- 
tractors formally agreed to build the light- 
house for $56,000, and, more than that, to 
have the lantern burning within a single year. 

By the last of September a huge, unwieldy 
foundation caisson was framing in a Balti- 
more shipyard. This caisson was a bottomless 
wooden box, 32 feet square and 12 feet high, 
with the top nearly as thick as the height of a 
man, so that it would easily sustain the weight 
of the great iron cylinder soon to be placed 
upon it. It was lined and caulked, painted 
inside and out to make it air-tight and water- 
tight, and then dragged out into the bay, to- 
gether with half an acre of mud and dock 
timbers. Here the workmen crowned it with 
the first two courses of the iron cylinder — a 
collar 30 feet in diameter and about 12 feet 
high. Inside of this a second cylinder, a steel 
air-shaft, five feet in diameter, rose from a 
hole in the centre of the caisson, this provid- 
ing a means of entrance and exit when the 
structure should reach the shoal. 

Upon the addition of this vast weight of 
iron and steel, the wooden caisson, although 



272 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

it weighed nearly a hundred tons, disappeared 
completely under the water, leaving in view 
only the great black rim of the iron cylinder 
and the top of the air-shaft. 

On April 7th of the next year the fleet was 
ready to start on its voyage of conquest. The 
v/hole country had contributed to the expedi- 
tion. Cleveland, O., furnished the iron plates 
for the tower; Pittsburg sent steel and ma- 
chinery; South Carolina supplied the enormous 
yellow-pine timbers for the caisson; Washing- 
ton provided two great barge-loads of stone; 
and New York City contributed hundreds of 
tons of Portland cement and sand and gravel, 
it being cheaper to bring even such supplies 
from the North than to gather them on the 
shores of the bay. 

Everything necessary to the completion of 
the lighthouse and the maintenance of the 
eighty-eight men was loaded aboard ship. 
And quite a fleet it made as it lay out on the 
bay in the warm spring sunshine. The flag- 
shij) was a big, double-deck steamer, 200 feet 
over all, once used in the coastwise trade. She 
was loaded close down to her white lines, and 



SEA-BUILDERS 273 

men lay over her rails in double rows. She 
led the fleet down the bay, and two tugs and 
seven barges followed in her wake like a flock 
of ducklings. The steamer towed the caisson 
at the end of a long hawser. 

In three days the fleet reached the light- 
house site. During all of this time the sea 
had been calm, with only occasional puff*s of 
wind, and the builders planned, somewhat ex- 
ultantly, to drop the caisson the moment they 
arrived. 

But before they were well in sight of the 
point, the sea awakened suddenly, as if con- 
scious of the planned surprise. A storm blew 
up in the north, and at sunset on the tenth of 
April the waves were washing over the top of 
the iron cylinder and slapping it about like a 
boy's raft. A few tons of water inside the 
structure would sink it entirely, and the build- 
er would lose months of work and thousands 
of dollars. 

From a rude platform on top of the cylinder 
two men were working at the pumps to keep 
the water out. When the edge of the great 
iron rim heaved up with the waves, they 



274 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

pumped and shouted; and when it went down, 
they strangled and clung for their lives. 

The builder saw the necessity of immediate 
assistance. Twelve men scrambled into a life- 
boat, and three waves later they were dashed 
against the rim of the cylinder. Here half of 
the number, clinging like cats to the iron 
plates, spread out a sail canvas and drew it 
over the windward half of the cylinder, while 
the other men pulled it down with their hands 
and teeth and lashed it firmly into place. In 
this way the cylinder shed most of the wash, 
although the larger waves still scuttled down 
within its iron sides. Half of the crew was 
now hurried down the rope-ladders inside the 
cylinder, where the water was nearly three feet 
deep and swashing about like a whirlpool. 
They all knew that one more than ordinarily 
large wave would send the whole structure to 
the bottom; but they dipped swiftly, and 
passed up the water without a word. It was 
nothing short of a battle for life. They must 
keep the water down, or drown like rats in a 
hole. They began work at sunset, and at sun- 
rise the next morning, when the fury of the 



SEA-BUILDERS 277 

storm was somewhat abated, they were still at 
work, and the cylinder was saved. 

The swells were now too high to think of 
planting the caisson, and the fleet ran into the 
mouth of the Great Wicomico River to await 
a more favourable opportunity. Here the 
builders lay for a week. To keep the men 
busy some of them were employed in mixing 
concrete, adding another course of iron to the 
cylinder, and in other tasks of preparation. 
The crew was composed largely of Americans 
and Irishmen, with a few Norwegians, the 
ordinary Italian or Bohemian labourer not 
taking kindly to the risks and terrors of such 
an expedition. Their number included car- 
penters, masons, iron-workers, bricklayers, 
caisson-men, sailors, and a host of common 
shovellers. The pay varied from twenty to 
fifty cents an hour for time actually worked, 
and the builders furnished meals of unlimited 
ham, bread, and coffee. 

On April 17th, the weather being calmer, 
the fleet ventured out stealthily. A buoy 
marked the spot where the lighthouse was to 



278 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

stand. When the cyhnder was exactly over 
the chosen site, the valves of two of the com- 
partments into which it was divided were 
quickly opened, and the water pom-ed in. The 
moment the lower edge of the caisson, borne 
downward by the weight of water, touched 
the shoal, the men began working with fever- 
ish haste. Large stones were rolled from the 
barges around the outside of the caisson to 
prevent the water from eating away the sand 
and tipping the structure over. 

In the meantime a crew of twenty men had 
taken their places in the compartments of the 
cylinder still unfilled with water. A chute 
from the steamer vomited a steady stream of 
dusty concrete down upon their heads. A 
pump drenched them with an unceasing cata- 
ract of salt water. In this terrible hole they 
wallowed and struggled, shovelling the con- 
crete mortar into place and ramming it down. 
Every man on the expedition, even the cooks 
and the stokers, was called upon at this su- 
preme moment to take part in the work. Un- 
less the structure could be sufficiently ballasted 
while the water was calm, the first wave would 



r 




Saving the Cylinder of the Lighthouse at Smith Point, 
Chesapeake Bay, from being Swamj)ed in a High Sea. 

When the builders were tovnng the unwieldy cylhtder out to net it in 
position^ the water became suddenly rough and beyan to Jill it. 
Workmen^ at the risk of their lives^ boarded the cylinder, and by 
desperate labours succeeded in spreading sail canvas over it, and 
so saved a structure that had cost months of labour and thousands 
of dollars. 



SEA-BUILDERS 281 

brush it over and pound it to pieces on the 
shoals. 

After nearly two hours of this exhausting 
labour the captain of the steamer suddenly 
shouted the command to cast away. 

The sky had turned black and the waves 
ran high. All of the cranes were whipped in, 
and up from the cylinder poured the shovel- 
lers, looking as if they had been freshly rolled 
in a mortar bed. There was a confused babel 
of voices and a wild flight for the steamer. 
In the midst of the excitement one of the 
barges snapped a hawser, and, being lightened 
of its load, it all but turned over in a trough 
of the sea. The men aboard her went down 
on their faces, clung fast, and shouted for 
help, and it was only with difficulty that they 
were rescued. One of the life-boats, ventur- 
ing too near the iron cylinder, was crushed 
like an egg-shell, but a tug was ready to pick 
up the men who manned it. 

So terrified were the workmen by the dan- 
gers and difficulties of the task that twelve of 
them ran away that night without asking for 
their pay. 



282 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

On the following morning the builder was 
appalled to see that the cylinder was inclined 
more than four feet from the perpendicular. 
In spite of the stone piled around the caisson, 
the water had washed the sand from under one 
edge of it, and it had tipped part way over. 
Now was the pivotal point of the whole enter- 
prise. A little lack of courage or skill, and 
the work was doomed. 

The waves still ran high, and the freshet 
currents from the Potomac River poured past 
the shoals at the rate of six or seven miles an 
hour. And yet one of the tugs ran out dar- 
ingly, dragging a barge-load of stone. It 
was made fast, and although it pitched up and 
down so that every wave threatened to swamp 
it and every man aboard was seasick, they 
managed to throw off 200 tons more of stone 
around the base of the caisson on the side 
toward which it was inclined. In this way 
a'urther tipping in that direction was pre- 
' ented, and the action of the water on the 
sand under the opposite side soon righted the 
structure. 

Beginning on the morning of April 21st 



SEA-BUILDERS 283 

the entire crew worked steadily for forty-eight 
hours without sleeping or stopping for meals 
more than fifteen minutes at a time. When 
at last they were relieved, they came up out 
of the cylinder shouting and cheering because 
the foundation was at last secure. 

The structure was now about thirty feet 
high, and filled nearly to the top with concrete. 
The next step was to force it down IS^^ feet 
into the hard sand at the bottom of the bay, 
thus securing it for ever against the power of 
the waves and the tide. An air-lock, which is 
a strongly built steel chamber about the size of 
a hogshead, was placed on top of the air-shaft, 
the water in the big box-like caisson at the 
bottom of the cylinder was forced out with 
compressed air, and the men prepared to enter 
the caisson. 

No toil can compare in its severity and dan- 
ger with that of a caisson worker. He is first 
sent into the air-lock, and the air-pressure is 
gradually increased around him until it equals 
that of the caisson below; then he may de- 
scend. New men often shout and beg piti- 
fully to be liberated from the torture. Fre- 



284 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

quently the effect of the compressed air is such 
that they bleed at the ears and nose, and for 
a time their heads throb as if about to burst 
open. 

In a few minutes these pains pass away, the 
workers crawl down the long ladder of the air- 
shaft and begin to dig away the sand of the 
sea-bottom. It is heaped high around the 
bottom of a four-inch pipe which leads up the 
air-shaft and reaches out over the sea. A 
valve in the pipe is opened and the sand and 
stones are driven upward by the compressed 
air in the caisson and blown out into the water 
with tremendous force. As the sand is mined 
away, the great tower above it slowly sinks 
downward, while the subterranean toilers grow 
sallow-faced, yellow-eyed, become half deaf, 
and lose their appetites. 

When Smith's Point Light was within two 
feet of being deep enough the workmen had 
a strange and terrible adventure. 

Ten men were in the caisson at the time. 
They noticed that the candles stuck along the 
wall were burning a lambent green. Black 
streaks, that widened swiftly, formed along 







Great Waves Dashed Entirely Over Them, so that They 
had to Cling for Their Lives to the Air-Pipes. 

In erscting the Smith Point lif/hthouse, after the cylinder was set up, 
it had to he forced dovm fifteen and a half feet into the sand. 
The lives of the men vjho did this, v)orking in the caisson at the 
bottom of the sea, were absolutely in the hands of the men who 
managed the engine and the air-compressor at the surface ; and 
tvnce these latter y^ere entirely deluged by the sea, fmt still main- 
tained steam, and kept everything running as if no sea was play- 
in^/ ocn' them. 



SEA-BUILDERS 287 

the white-painted walls. One man after an- 
other began staggering dizzily, with eyes 
blinded and a sharp burning in the throat. 
Orders were instantly given to ascend, and the 
crew, with the help of ropes, succeeded in es- 
caping. All that night the men lay moaning 
and sleepless in their bunks. In the morning 
only a few of them could open their eyes, and 
all experienced the keenest torture in the pres- 
ence of light. Bags were fitted over their 
heads, and they were led out to their meals. 

That afternoon Major E. H. RufFner, of 
Baltimore, the Government engineer for the 
district, appeared with two physicians. An 
examination of the caisson showed that the 
men had struck a vein of sulphuretted hydro- 
gen gas. 

Here was a new difficulty — a difficulty never 
before encountered in lighthouse construction. 
For three days the force lay idle. There 
seemed no way of completing the foundation. 
On the fourth day, after another flooding of 
the caisson, Mr. Flaherty called for vohmteers 
to go down the air-shaft, agreeing to accom- 
pany them himself — all this in the face of the 



288 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

siJectacle of thirty-five men moaning in their 
bmiks, with their ej^es burning and bhnded 
and their throats raw. And yet fourteen men 
stepped forward and offered to "see the work 
through." 

Upon reaching the bottom of the tower they 
fovmd that the flow of gas was less rapid, and 
the)^ worked with almost frantic energy, ex- 
pecting every moment to feel the gas griping 
in their throats. In half an hour another shift 
came on, and before night the lighthouse was 
within an inch or two of its final resting-place. 

The last shift was headed by an old caisson- 
man named Griffin, who bore the record of 
having stood seventy-five pounds of air-pres- 
sure in the famous Long Island gas tunnel. 
Just as the men were ready to leave the cais- 
son the gas suddenly burst up again with 
something of explosive violence. Instantly 
the workmen threw down their tools and made 
a dash for the air-shaft. Here a terrible strug- 
gle followed. Only one man could go up the 
ladder at a time, and they scrambled and 
fought, pulling down by main force every man 
who succeeded in reaching the rounds. Then 



SEA-BUILDERS 289 

one after another they dropped in the sand, 
unconscious. 

Griffin, remaining below, had signalled for 
a rope. When it came down, he groped for 
the nearest workman, fastened it around his 
body, and sent him aloft. Then he crawled 
around and pulled the unconscious w^orkmen 
together under the air-shaft. One by one he 
sent them up. The last was a powerfully built 
Irishman named Howard. Griffin's eyes were 
blinded, and he was so dizzy that he reeled 
like a drunken man, but he managed to get 
the rope around Howard's body and start him 
up. At the eighteen-inch door of the lock the 
unconscious Irishman wedged fast, and those 
outside could not pull him through. Griffin 
climbed painfully up the thirty feet of ladder 
and pushed and pulled until Howard's limp 
body went through. Griffin tried to folloAv 
him, but his numbed fingers slipped on the 
steel rim, and he fell backward into the death - 
hole below. They dropped the rope again, 
but there was no response. One of the men 
called Griffin by name. The half -conscious 
caisson-man aroused himself and managed to 



290 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

tie the rope under his arms. Then he, too, 
was hoisted aloft, and when he was dragged 
from the caisson, more dead than ahve, the 
half-bhnded men on the steamer's deck set up 
a shout of applause — all the credit that he ever 
received. 

Two of the men prostrated by the gas were 
sent to a hospital in New York, where they 
were months in recovering. Another went in- 
sane. Griffin was blind for three weeks. Four 
other caisson-men came out of the work with 
the painful malady known as "bends," which 
attacks those who work long under high air- 
pressure. A victim of the "bends" cannot 
straighten his back, and often his legs and 
arms are cramped and contorted. These ter- 
rible results will give a good idea of the hero- 
ism required of the sea-builder. 

Having sunk the caisson deep enough the 
workmen filled it full of concrete and sealed 
the top of the air-shaft. Then they built the 
light-keeper's home, and the lantern was ready 
for lighting. Three days within the contract 
year the tower was formally turned over to 
the Government. 



SEA-BUILDERS 291 

And thus the builders, besides providing a 
warning to the hundreds of vessels that yearly 
pass up the bay, erected a lasting monument 
to their own skill, courage, and perseverance. 
As long as the shoal remains the hght will 
stand. In the course of half a century, per- 
haps less, the sea-water will gnaw away the 
iron of the cylinder, but there will still remain 
the core of concrete, as hard and solid as the 
day on which it was planted. 

It is fitting that work which has drawn so 
largely upon the highest intellectual and moral 
endowments of the engineer and the builder 
should not serve the selfish interests of any 
one man, nor of any single corporation, nor 
even of the Government which provided the 
means, but that it should be a gift to the world 
at large. Other nations, even Great Britain, 
which has more at stake upon the seas than 
any other country, impose regular lighthouse 
taxes upon vessels entering their harbours; 
but the lights erected by the United States 
flash a free warning to any ship of any land. 




Peter Cooper Hewitt. 
With his interrupter. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 

Peter Cooper Hewitt and His Three Great Invention's — 

The Mercurtj Arc Light — The New Electi^ical 

Converter — The Heicitt Interrupter 

It is indeed a great moment when an in- 
ventor comes to the announcement of a new 
and epoch-making achievement. He has been 
working for years, perhaps, in his laboratory, 
strugghng along unknown, unheard of, often 
poor, failing a hundred times for every 
achieved success, but finally, all in a moment, 
surprising the secret which nature has guarded 
so long and so faithfully. He has discovered 
a new principle that no one has known before, 
he has made a wonderful new machine — and 
it works! What he has done in his labora- 
tory for himself now becomes of interest to 
all the world. He has a great message to give. 
His patience and perseverance through years 



294 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

of hard work have produced something that 
will make life easier and happier for millions 
of people, that will open great new avenues for 
human effort and human achievement, build 
up new fortunes; often, indeed, change the 
whole course of business affairs in the world, 
if not the very channels of human thought. 
Think what the steam-engine has done, and 
the telegraph, and the sewing-machine! All 
this wonder lies to-day in the brain of the in- 
ventor; to-morrow it is a part of the world's 
treasure. 

Such a moment came on an evening in 
January, 1902, when Peter Cooper Hewitt, of 
New York City — then wholly unknown to the 
greater world — made the announcement of an 
invention of such importance that Lord Kel- 
vin, the greatest of living electricians, after- 
ward said that of all the things he saw in 
America the work of Mr. Hewitt attracted 
him most. 

On that evening in January, 1902, a curious 
crowd was gathered about the entrance of the 
Engineers' Club in New York City. Over the 
doorway a narrow glass tube gleamed with a 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 295 

strange blue-green light of such intensity that 
print was easily readable across the street, and 
yet so softly radiant that one could look di- 
rectly at it without the sensation of blinding 
discomfort which accompanies nearly all brill- 
iant artificial lights. The hall within, where 
Mr. Hewitt was making the first public an- 
nouncement of his discovery, was also illumi- 
nated by the wonderful new tubes. The light 
was different from anything ever seen before, 
grateful to the eyes, much like daylight, only 
giving the face a curious, pale-green, un- 
earthly appearance. The cause of this phe- 
nomenon was soon evident; the tubes were 
seen to give forth all the rays except red — 
orange, yellow, green, blue, violet — so that 
under its illumination the room and the street 
without, the faces of the spectators, the cloth- 
ing of the women lost all their shades of red ; 
indeed, changing the very face of the world 
to a pale green-blue. It was a redless light. 
The extraordinary appearance of this lamp 
and its profound significance as a scientific 
discovery at once awakened a wide public in- 
terest, especially among electricians who best 



296 BOYS* SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

understood its importance. Here was an en- 
tirely new sort of electric light. The familiar 
incandescent lamp, the invention of Thomas 
A. Edison, though the best of all methods of 
illumination, is also the most expensive. Mr. 
Hewitt's lamp, though not yet adapted to all 
the purposes served by the Edison lamp, on 
account of its peculiar colour, produces eight 
times as much light with the same amount 
of power. It is also practically indestructible, 
there being no filament to burn out; and it 
requires no special wiring. By means of this 
invention electricity, instead of being the most 
costly means of illumination, becomes the 
cheapest — cheaper even than kerosene. No 
further explanation than this is necessary to 
show the enormous importance of this inven- 
tion. 

Mr. Hewitt's announcement at once awak- 
ened the interest of the entire scientific world 
and made the inventor famous, and yet it was 
only the forerunner of two other inventions 
equally important. Once discover a master- 
key and it often unlocks many doors. Tracing 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 297 

out the principles involved in his new lamp, 
Mr. Hewitt invented: 

A new, cheap, and simple method of con- 
verting alternating electrical currents into 
direct currents. 

An electrical interrupter or valve, in many 
respects the most wonderful of the three in- 
ventions. 

Before entering upon an explanation of 
these discoveries, which, though seemingly dif- 
ficult and technical, are really simple and easily 
understandable, it will be interesting to know 
something of Mr. Hewitt and his methods of 
work and the genesis of the inventions. 

Mr. Hewitt's achievements possess a pecul- 
iar interest for the people of this country. 
The inventor is an American of Americans. 
Born to wealth, the grandson of the famous 
philanthropist, Peter Cooper, the son of 
Abram S. Hewitt, one of the foremost citizens 
and statesmen of New York, Mr. Hewitt 
might have led a life of leisure and ease, but 
he has preferred to win his successes in the 
American way, by unflagging industry and 



298 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

perseverance, and has come to his new fortune 
also Hke the American, suddenly and brilliant- 
ly. As a people we like to see a man deserve 
his success! The same qualities which made 
Peter Cooper one of the first of American^ 
millionaires, and Abram S. Hewitt one of the 
foremost of the world's steel merchants. Mayor 
of New York, and one of its most trusted citi- 
zens, have placed Mr. Peter Cooper Hewitt 
among the greatest of American inventors and 
scientists. Indeed, Peter Cooper and Abram 
S. Hewitt were both inventors; that is, they 
had the imaginative inventive mind. Peter 
Cooper once said: 

''I was always planning and contriving, and 
was never satisfied unless I was doing some- 
thing difficult — something that had never been 
done before, if possible." 

The grandfather built the first American 
locomotive; he was one of the most ardent 
supporters of Cyrus Field in the great project 
of an Atlantic cable, and he was for a score of 
years the president of a cable company. His 
was the curious, constructive mind. As a boy 
he built a washing machine to assist his over- 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 301 

worked mother; later on he built the first lawn- 
mower and invented a process for rolling iron, 
the first used in this country; he constructed 
a torpedo-boat to aid the Greeks in their re- 
volt against Turkish tyranny in 1824. He 
dreamed of utilising the current of the East 
River for manufacturing power; he even ex- 
perimented with flying machines, becoming so 
enthusiastic in this labour that he nearly lost 
the sight of an eye through an explosion which 
blew the apparatus to pieces. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the grandson 
comes naturally by his inclinations. It was 
his grandfather who gave him his first chest 
of tools and taught him to work with his 
hands, and he has always had a fondness for 
contriving new machines and of working out 
difficult scientific problems. Until the last few 
years, however, he has never devoted his whole 
time to the work which best pleased him. For 
years he was connected with his father's ex- 
tensive business enterprise, an active member, 
in fact, of the firm of Cooper, Hewitt & Co., 
and he has always been prominent in the social 
life of New York, a member of no fewer than 



S02 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

eight prominent clubs. But never for a mo- 
ment in his career — he is now forty-two years 
old, though he looks scarcely thirty-five — has 
he ceased to be interested in science and me- 
chanics. As a student in Stevens Institute, 
and later in Columbia College, he gave par- 
ticular attention to electricity, physics, chem- 
istry, and mechanics. Later, when he went 
into business, his inventive mind turned natu- 
rally to the improvement of manufacturing 
methods, with the result that his name appears 
in the Patent Records as the inventor of many 
useful devices — a vacuum pan, a glue clarifier,. 
a glue cutter and other glue machinery. He 
worked at many sorts of trades with his own 
hands — machine-shop practice, blacksmithing, 
steam-fitting, carpentry, jewelry work, and 
other work-a-day employments. He was em- 
ployed in a jeweller's shop, learning how to 
make rings and to set stones; he managed a 
steam launch; he was for eight years in his 
grandfather's glue factory, where he had 
practical problems in mechanics constantly 
brought to his attention. And he was able to 
combine all this hard practical work with a 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 303 

fair amount of shooting, golfing, and auto- 

mobiling. 

Most of Mr. Hewitt's scientific work of 
recent years has been done after business hours 
—the long, slow, plodding toil of the experi- 
menter. There is surely no royal road to suc- 
cess in invention, no matter how well a man 
may be equipped, no matter how favourably 
his means are fitted to his hands. Mr. Hewitt 
worked for seven years on the electrical in- 
vestigations which resulted in his three great 
inventions; thousands of experiments were 
performed; thousands of failures paved the 
way for the first ghmmer of success. 

His laboratory during most of these years 
was hidden away in the tall tower of Madison 
Square Garden, overlooking IVIadison Square, 
with the roar of Broadway and Twenty-third 
Street coming up from the distance. Here he 
has worked, gradually expanding the scope of 
his experiments, increasing his force of assist- 
ants, until he now has an office and two work- 
shops in Madison Square Garden and is build- 
ing a more extensive laboratory elsewhere. 
Replying to the remark that he was fortunate 



IHH BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS \ 

in having the means to carry forward his ex- 
periments in his own way, he said: 

"The fact is quite the contrary. I have hacB 
to make my laboratory pay as I went along.' 

Mr. Hewitt chose his problem deliberately, 
and he chose one of the most difficult in all the 
range of electrical science, but one which, if 
solved, promised the most flattering rewards. 

"The essence of modern invention," he said, 
"is the saving of waste, the increase of effi- 
ciency in the variovis mechanical appliances." 

This being so, he chose the most wasteful, 
the least efficient of all widely used electrical 
devices — the incandescent lamp. Of all the 
power used in producing the glowing filament 
in the Edison bulb, about ninety-seven per 
cent, is absolutely wasted, only three per cent, 
appearing in light. This three per cent, effi- 
ciency of the incandescent lamp compares very 
unfavourably, indeed, with the forty per cent. 
cflPciency of the gasoline engine, the twenty- 
two per cent, efficiency of the marine engine, 
and the ninety per cent, efficiency of the 
dynamo. 

Mr. Hewitt first stated his problem very 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 



305 



accurately. The waste of power in the incan- 
descent lamp is known to be due largely to the 




The Hewitt Mercury Vapour Light. 

The circular piece just above the switch button is <me form of ** boost* 
ing coil '" which operates for a fraction of a second when the cur- 
rent is first turned on. The tube shoicn here is about an inch in 
diameter and several feet lony. Various shapes may be used. 
Unless broken^ the tubes never need renewal. 

conversion of a considerable part of the elec- 
tricity used into useless heat. An electric- 



306 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

lamp bulb feels hot to the hand. It was there- 
fore necessary to produce a cool light; that is, 
a light in which the energy was converted 
wholly or largely into light rays and not into 
heat rays. This, indeed, has long been one of 
the chief goals of ambition among inventors. 
Mr. Hewitt turned his attention to the gases. 
Why could not some incandescent gas be made 
to yield the much desired light without heat? 

This was the germ of the idea. Compara- 
tively little was known of the action of elec- 
tricity in passing through the various gases, 
though the problem involved had long been 
the subject of experiment, and Mr. Hewitt 
found himself at once in a maze of unsolved 
problems and difficulties. 

"I tried many different gases," he said, ''and 
found that some of them gave good results — 
nitrogen, for instance — but many of them pro- 
duced too much heat and presented other dif- 
ficulties." 

Finally, he took up experiments with mer- 
cury confined in a tube from which the air 
had been exhausted. The mercury arc, as it 
is called, had been experimented with years 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 307 

before, had even been used as a light, although 
at the time he began his investigations Mr. 
Hewitt knew nothing of these earlier investi- 
gations. He used ordinary glass vacuum 
tubes with a little mercury in the bottom which 
he had reduced to a gas or vapour under the 
influence of heat or by a strong current of 
electricity. He found it a rocky experimen- 
tal road; he has called invention ''systematic 
guessing." 

"I had an equation with a large number of 
unknown quantities," he said. ''About the 
only thing known for a certainty was the 
amount of current passing into the receptacle 
containing the gas, and its pressure. I had to 
assume values for these unknown quantities in 
every experiment, and you can understand 
what a great number of trials were necessary, 
using difl*erent combinations, before obtaining 
results. I presume thousands of experiments 
were made." 

Many other investigators had been on the 
very edge of the discovery. They had tried 
sending strong currents througli a vacuum 
tube containing mercury vapour, but had 



308 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

found it impossible to control the resistance. I 
One day, however, in running a current into , 
the tube Mr. Hewitt suddenly recognised cer- | 
tain flashes; a curious phenomenon. Always 
it is the unexpected thing, the thing unac- 
counted for, that the mind of the inventor 
leaps upon. For there, perhaps, is the key he 
is seeking. Mr. Hewitt continued his experi- 
ments and found that the mercury vapour was 
conducting. He next discovered that when 
once the high resistance of the cold mercury 
was overcome, a very much less powerful cur- 
rent found ready passage and produced a very 
brilliant light: the glow of the mercury va- 
pour. This, Mr. Hewitt says, was the crucial 
point, the genesis of his three inventions, for , 
all of them are applications of the mercury arc. 
Thus, in short, he invented the new lamp. 
By the use of what is known to electricians as 
a "boosting coil," supplying for an instant a 
very powerful current, the initial resistance of 
the cold mercury in the tube is overcome, and 
then, the booster being automatically shut off, 
the current ordinarily used in incandescent 
Hghting produces an, illumination eight times 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 309 

as intense as the Edison bulb of the same 
candle-power. The mechanism is exceedingly 
simple and cheap; a button turns the light on 
or off; the remaining apparatus is not more 
complex than that of the ordinary incandes- 
cent light. The Hewitt lamp is best used in 
the form of a long horizontal tube suspended 
overhead in a room, the illumination filling all 
the space below with a radiance much like 
daylight, not glaring and sharp as with the 
Edison bulb. Mr. Hewitt has a large room 
hung with green material and thus illumi- 
nated, giving the visitor a very strange im- 
pression of a redless world. After a few mo- 
ments spent here a glance out of the window 
shows a curiously red landscape, and red 
buildings, a red Madison Square, the red com- 
ing out more prominently by contrast with the 
blue-green of the light. 

"For many purposes," said Mr. Hewitt, 
''the light in its present form is already easily 
adaptable. For shopwork, draughting, read- 
ing, and other work, where the eye is called on 
for continued strain, the absence of red is an 
advantage, for I have found light without the 



310 BOYS^ SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

red much less tiring to the eye. I use it in my 
own laboratories, and my men prefer it to 
ordinary daylight." 

In other respects, however, its colour is ob- 
jectionable, and Mr. Hewitt has experimented 
with a view to obtaining the red rays, thereby 
producing a pure white light. 

''Why not put a red globe around your 
lamp?" is a common question put to the in- 
ventor. This is an apparently easy solution 
of the difficulty until one is reminded that red 
glass does not change light waves, but simply 
suppresses all the rays that are not red. Since 
there are no red rays in the Hewitt lamp, the 
effect of the red globe would be to cut off all 
the light. 

But Mr. Hewitt showed me a beautiful 
piece of pink silk, coloured with rhodimin, 
which, when thrown over the lamp, changes 
some of the orange rays into red, giving a bet- 
ter balanced illumination, although at some 
loss of brilliancy. Further experiments along 
this line are now in progress, investigations 
both with mercury vapour and with other 
gases. 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 313 

Mr. Hewitt has found that the rays of his 
new lamp have a pecuHar and stimulating 
effect on plant growth. A series of experi- 
ments, in which seeds of various plants were 
sown under exactly the same conditions, one 
set being exposed to daylight and one to the 
mercury gaslight, showed that the latter grew 
much more rapidly and luxuriantly. Without 
doubt, also, these new rays will have value in 
the curing of certain kinds of disease. 

Further experimentation with the mercury 
arc led to the other two inventions, the con- 
verter and the interrupter. And first of the 
converter : 

Hewitt's Electrical Converter. — The con- 
verter is simplicity itself. Here are two kinds 
of electrical currents — the alternating and the 
direct. Science has found it much cheaper and 
easier to produce and transmit the alternating 
current than the direct current. Unfortu- 
nately, however, only the direct currents are 
used for such practical purposes as driving an 
electric car or automobile, or running an ele- 
vator, or operating machine tools or the presses 
in a printing-office, and they are preferable 



314 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

for electric lighting. The power of Niagara^ 
Falls is changed into an alternating current: 
which can be sent at high pressure (high volt- 
age) over the wires for long distances, but 
before it can be used it must, for some pur-; 
poses, be converted into a direct current. The 
apparatus now in use is cumbersome, expen- 
sive, and wasteful. 

Mr. Hewitt's new converter is a mere bulb 
of glass or of steel, which a man can hold in his 
hand. The inventor found that the mercury 
bulb, when connected with wires carrying an 
alternating current, had the curious and won- 
derful property of permitting the passage of 
the positive half of the alternating wave when 
the current has started and maintained in that 
direction, and of suppressing the other half ; in 
other words, of changing an alternating cur- 
rent into a direct current. In this process there 
was a loss, the same for currents of all poten- 
tials, of only 14 volts. A three-pound Hewitt 
converter will do the work of a seven-hundred- 
pound apparatus of the old type; it will cost 
dollars where the other costs hundreds; and it 
will save a large proportion of the electricity 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 315 

wasted in the old process. By this simple 
device, therefore, Mr. Hewitt has in a mo- 
ment extended the entire range of electrical 
development. As alternating currents can be 
carried longer distances by using high pres- 
sure, and the pressure or voltage can be 
changed by the use of a simple transformer 
and then changed into a direct current by the 
converter at any convenient point along the 
line, therefore more waterfalls can be utilised, 
more of the power of coal can be utilised, more 
electricity saved after it is generated, render- 
ing the operating of all industries requiring 
power so much cheaper. Every electric rail- 
road, every lighting plant, every factorj^ using 
electricity, is intimately concerned in Mr. 
Hewitt's device, for it will cheapen their pow- 
er and thereby cheapen their products to you 
and to me. 

Hewitt's Electrical Interrupter. — The third 
invention is in some respects the most wonder- 
ful of the three. Technically, it is called an 
electric interrupter or valve. "If a long hst 
of present-day desiderata were drawn uj)," 
says the Electrical World and Engineer, "it 



316 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

would perhaps contain no item of more im- 
mediate importance than an interrupter which 
shall be . . . inexpensive and simple of 
application." This is the view of science; and 
therefore this device is one upon which a grea^ 
many inventors, including Mr. Marconi, have 
recently been working; and Mr. Hewitt has 
been fortunate in producing the much-needed 
successful apparatus. 

The chief demand for an interrupter has 
come from the scores of experimenters who 
are working with wireless telegraphy. In 
1894 jVIr. Marconi began communicating 
through space without wires, and it may be 
said that wireless telegraphy has ever since 
been the world's imminent invention. Who 
has not read with profound interest the news 
of Mr. ]\Iarconi's success, the gradual in- 
creases of his distances? Who has not sympa- 
thised with his effort to perfect his devices, 
to produce a tuning apparatus by means of 
which messages flying through space could be 
kept secret? And here at last has come the in- 
vention which science most needed to complete 
and vitalise JNIarconi's work. Bv means of 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 317 

Mr. Hewitt's interrupter, the simplicity of 
which is as astonishing as its efficiency, the 
whole problem has been suddenlj^ and easily 
solved. 

Mr. Hewitt's new interrupter may, indeed, 
be called the enacting clause of wireless teleg- 
raphy. By its use the transmission of power- 
ful and persistent electrical waves is reduced 
to scientific accuracy. The apparatus is not 
only cheap, light, and simple, but it is also a 
great saver of electrical power. 

The interrupter^ also, is a simple device. 
As I have already shown, the mercury vapour 
opposes a high resistance to the passage of 
electricity until the current reaches a certain 
high potential, when it gives way suddenly, 
allowing a current of low potential to pass 
through. This property can be applied in 
breaking a high potential current, such as is 
used in wireless telegraphy, so that the waves 
set up are exactly the proper lengths, always 
accurate, always the same, for sending mes- 
sages through space. By the present method 
an ordinary arc or spark gap — that is, a spark 
passing between two brass balls — is employed 



318 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

in sending messages across the Atlantic. Mar- 
c ni uses a spark as large as a man's wrist, and 
iA2 noise of its passage is so deafening that the 
operators are compelled to wear cotton in their 
ears, and often they must shield their eyes 
from the Winding brilhancy of the discharges. 
JMoreover, this open-air arc is subject to varia- 
tions, to great losses of current, the brass balls 
become eroded, and the accuracy of the trans- 
mission is much impaired. All this is obviated 
by the cheap, simple, noiseless, sparkless mer- 
cury bulb. 

"What I have done," said Mr. Hewitt, "is 
to perfect a device by means of which mes- 
sages can be sent rapidlj^ and without the loss 
of current occasioned by the spark gap. In 
wireless telegraphy the trouble has been that 
it was difficult to keep the sending and the 
receiving instruments attuned. By the use of 
my interrupter this can be accomplished." 

And the possibilities of the mercury tube — 
indeed, of incandescent gas tubes in general 
— have by no means been exhausted. A new 
door has been opened to investigators, and no 
one knows what science will find in the treas- 



THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 319 

ure-hoiise — perhaps new and more wonderful 
inventions, perhaps the very secret of electric- 
ity itself. Mr. Hewitt is still busily engaged 
in experimenting along these lines, both in the 
realm of abstract science and in that of prac- 
tical invention. He is too careful a scientist, 
however, to speak much of the future, but 
those who are most familiar with his methods 
of work predict that the three inventions he 
has already announced are only forerunners 
of many other discoveries. 

The chief pursuit of science and invention 
in this day of wonders is the electrical con- 
quest of the world, the introduction of the 
electrical age. The electric motor is driving 
out the steam locomotive, the electric light is 
superseding gas and kerosene, the waterfall 
must soon take the place of coal. But certain 
great problems stand like solid walls in the 
way of development, part of them problems 
of science, part of mechanical efficiency. The 
battle of science is, indeed, not unlike real war, 
charging its way over one battlement after an- 
other, until the very citadel of final secret is 
captured. Mr. Hewitt with his three inven- 



320 BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS 

tions has led the way over some of the most 
serious present barriers in the progress of 
technical electricity, enabling the whole in- 
dustry, in a hundred different phases of its 
progress, to go forward. 



THE END 



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